Apocalypse is a concept which, in modern times, has collected to it self a substantial fan base. Originating from religious text, the idea of a culminating collapse of human affairs, or the end of the world, is an ever growing expectation in popular thought. Alluded to in environmental estimations which foresee a looming global crisis. Imagined in disaster films which portray the drama of global catastrophes. Endlessly conceptualized in fiction and non-fiction, religious and secular books and literature. The concept of an impending apocalypse stands in the shadows of modern thought.

Its certain proof rests in the shared notion of instability. The sense that the foundations to which society casts their security are vulnerable. It is a growing experience that the looming and grave challenges which face modern society are more than our leadership can bare. That man, in the midst of his unprecedented technological and organizational achievements, is out of his depth in the face consequential complexity. That the responsibilities which have accompanied our success are burdens which we have been unwilling, if not even unable to manage. We are a society divided and inept of the philosophical capacity to determine what is necessary. All while the consequences and challenges of existence ripen beneath our feet.

This vague yet growing perception, that that to which we lay our security is slowly eroding from within, is a common subtext which haunts the boarders of societal reason. Like the smell of smoke alerts the presence of fires, while yet unseen, the experiences of tragic events unamended, of the rising disparity and complexity of social and economic realities, the force of industrialization with out sober and effective leadership speaks to the modern mind. Affirming the sense that the challenges of our day are slowly eating us alive.

Our optimism is sure that every thing will be fine. That every problem has its answer. Every disease its cure. That in time, we will resolve what need be resolved. This assurance is a confidence in the fact that life will go on. And indeed it will. History is evidence of this. Yet history also plainly testifies the wreckage of countless societies. Daunted, if not confounded, in the questions of their time. We look back and wonder at their ignorance and blindness to what seems so obvious. We assume that those who went before us were brutish and uninformed. What will future generations think of us ?

The Biblical apocalyptic texts express judgment as fundamental to their revelation. The prophetic expression of judgment ought not to be understood as a vengeful threat of world-destruction. But rather an assertion of the Dominion and Purpose of God who brings order to the face of chaos. Judgment defines, divides and establishes. It creates certainty. Because it is Divine, it is associated with strong emotion. Expressing that there is rule and law above the world of human invention. A law and rule to which mankind owes its very existence.

'He who heads the rebukes of life shall abide among the wise.' ~ Proverbs 15 : 31

Judgment is in response to the issues and constructs of men which have wained corrupt. Corruption is, by definition, unstable, unprofitable, unwise, untrustworthy. To bring exacting amendment to this folly is the commerce of wrath and judgment. It is not unlike the processes in nature when a species is unable to maintain its own place in the natural order. If the species can not adapt or meet the demands of its environment, it is lost to history. Survival of the fittest becomes the dominant function. So with mankind, corruption compromises mans ability to remain established. Judgment serves to warn, rebuke and teach. Ultimately it serves to strengthen what is weak and dieing. Or it serves to cut off what is gang green and no longer sustainable.

'Blows that hurt cleanse away evil, so do stripes the inner depths of the soul.' ~ Proverbs 20 : 30

'He that sins against me wrongs his own soul: all they that hate me love death.' ~ Proverbs 8 : 36

The tragedy of the Biblical book of Revelations, or also know as the book of Apocalypse, is in its depictions of human suffering overflowing with horror, grief and hopelessness. The languish of men is described as springing from their own hearts. In their response to their sufferings they show no patience of hope but rather curse God. - Revelations 16:11 So much so that the predominate theme of human suffering and grief in the Book of Revelations is mens hardness of heart towards God, towards correction. Affirmed in mens singleness of mind to pursue their own failed methods. Despite all evidence to the contrary, man chooses the darkness rather than the light. - John 3 : 19 Creating, as it were, their own grief. It reads as a tragedy. Maybe even like a teen age melodrama. Yet ripe with consequence. Like a dark, rich wine when is comes of age.

'Behold, the LORD makes the earth empty, and makes it waste, and turns it upside down, and scatters abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word. The earth mourns and fades away, the world languishes and fades away, the haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left. The new wine mourns, the vine languishes, all the merry-hearted do sigh. The mirth of tabrets cease, the noise of them that rejoice ends, the joy of the harp ceases. They shall not drink wine with a song; strong drink shall be bitter to them that drink it. The city of confusion is broken down: every house is shut up, that no man may come in. There is a crying for wine in the streets; all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone. In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction. When thus it shall be in the midst of the land among the people, there shall be as the shaking of an olive tree,and as the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done.' 
~ Isaiah 24 : 1 - 13

While the judgment determined in scripture should be understood as a certainty, it is substantive in the context of mans capacity to decide. As people are not automatons, with out reason or the capacity to make choices. It is the choices, ultimately, which men make which must survive the scrutiny of reality. Evidently, it is to this reality which mankind is in subjection. Apocalypse deals with this relationship. It is the culmination of human affairs stumbling forward into the realm of consequence.

'Behold the LORD: for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth: He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth.' -- Psalm 96:13

Many mistake the judgment of God upon mans soul, or upon the world, as merely a religious construct. Which has no basis in objective reality. Certainly faith is a term often called upon to marginalize the discussion of God. It is common to hear the assertion that faith is contrary to reason. This sort of logic finds it easy to discredit the knowledge of a Sovereign, Ultimate, Creator. Yet, faith, is a response to objective experience. Faith has it basis in what a person has come to understand. A confidence in what is known to be. Many profound conclusions of science require a certain exercise of faith. The function of faith in science is an assessment of probabilities. To organize a series of observations about the world around us and then to make an assessment of what results can be expected given certain perceived facts. The outcomes are probable. Yet we have to place a certain confidence that out understanding has a sufficient grasp upon the evident facts of reality as to afford us the capacity to act or choose or assert what we believe to be right.

If science waited to rest assured that it understood every thing before it could conclude any thing, science would be impotent to function at all. Science must give it self some license to move according to the best information it can amass. It is a balance between responsible certainty while expanding into the unknown. Faith moves along similar principles. Faith does not speak conclusions into empty space. Rather faith observes the motions of life and derives certain confidences on which it expounds. Faith does not employ scientific tools to tests observations. Rather faith employs the tools of reason, sight, sound, touch, experience. From these most human capacities faith derives its insights.

Often faith is spoken of in a negative context. As though the use of faith implies that one does not use ones mind. Faith is not action without fact. Faith is not irrational belief. This does not mean people do not act irrationally, ignorantly, presumptuously. This does not mean that a persons faith can not be irrational. But what is of importance to understand is that faith, by definition, is not irrational, blind to the facts, etc.

Faith is simply confidence. Confidence in what one understands to be. Whether it is a scientific assumption based in tested observations. Or whether it is a metaphysical assertion whose realities are observable and knowable to the human intellect. What this means is that to discuss God, objective reality and an acknowledgement of perceived consequence is a discussion based in facts as we understand them to be. It is based on what we have observed, what those who have gone before us have observed. And an acknowledgement that the things of God are revealed in what we observe naturally.

'That which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has shown it in them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so they are without excuse.' ~ Romans 1:19 – 20

'Behold, God is exalted by His power : who teaches like Him ? Who has enjoined Him His way ? Or who can say, Thou has done wrong ? Remember to magnify His work, which men behold. Every man may see it, man may behold it afar off. Behold, God is great, and we know Him not, neither can the number of His years be searched out' -- Job 36 : 22 – 26

'The heavens declare the power of God, and space proclaims His forming hand; day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech or tongue where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out in all the earth, their words to the end of the world.' 
~ Psalm 19 : 1 – 4

So the notion of apocalypse, its ancient biblical texts, its seeming presence on the horizon of modern experience, are all valid considerations. All the possible facts, absolute understanding, is not necessary for us to arrive at responsible conclusions about the world we live in. About what can be expected of it. About what deeper purposes may be at work, functioning in the background of global and individual experience.

It is there for not hard to perceive what purposes may lay in wait. In recognizing, though even dimly, the order which weighs our world in the balances. Certainly trouble is no new adversary. But a perfect storm of distress will prove how long mankind can keep it together. What will remain are those qualities of the human heart that can not be shaken. Judgment will discover to what measure men posses such qualities.

Apocalypse Now

'Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near: So likewise, when you shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' – Mathew 24 : 32 – 35

That we live in a world with out president is evident and not argued. The suffering, war, starvation and disease of the 20^th century are characteristics one would not imagine to accompany a modern era of advanced civilization and governance. Yet as the knowledge and expertise of human invention has occupied ever new ground, the complexity of trouble and conflict has as well multiplied. What comes to mind is the old adage, “to whom much is given, much is expected.” What has accompanied the advance of civilization, the attainment of knowledge and the wealth of global interaction is the complexity of repercussions. The implications of such responsibility are hard to fathom. And yet the effects which men have set in motion will not be muffled.

Because the outcomes of our policy, our ambition, our lusts are not immediately produced, men set with in them selves to do what seems good for them today. Our disposition for convenience effects our better judgment. Or what we know to be right requires of us more effort than we feel we can afford. It is a complicated arrangement which man finds him self in. The costs and benefits of our choices are not readily evident. While the consequence of our orientations, our dispositions, our cognitions, our actions and inactions are inescapable. We make the bed that we lay in.

And yet the motions of our emanations amass slowly. Giving us time to acknowledge the processes. Giving us time to bare the implications of our selves. And learn to respond. Yet it is this same allowance for time and maturity which also acts as a couch of mirth. Carousing in the sense that we shall owe no accountability for our allowances. Obscuring the truth of our slow suffocation. The experience of a gathering apocalypse is like this. Its signs seem innocuous. We become subjective regarding the converging dread. As our undoing gathers in our very inner rooms.

The Biblical accounts of what the Bible calls 'the last days,' are mournful and stricken. Not the tabloid hysteria of some single event. But a complex, multifarious motion. Made of conflicts and disunions, betrayal and corruption, of wars and suffering, of philosophic nihilism and economic collapse, of environmental calamity and the inability of men to effect a mending response. It is not a world which we will arrive at one day, as though we were journeying to it. It is the world we live in now. Emanating with disposition. Caught in the gathering fires of growing adversity. Making grave consequence of the philosophical roots we have chosen for our selves. And stirring up trouble for our poorly conceived agendas. The green shoots of its spring growth are with us. The news of its woeful muse have been making headlines for years. Its future may as well take years to gather. Concerning its effect there should be no question.

'Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.' ~ Luke 21 : 26

'Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?' ~ Amos 5 : 18 – 20

'Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt: And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. ' ~ Isaiah 13 : 6 – 8

'For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water. And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.' ~ Isaiah 1 : 29 – 31

Certainly apocalypse describes a world running out of control. Hard pressed beyond measure. If there is any virtue of resolve in mankind, apocalypse would serve to wholly shake it out. And drive home the reality that, 'man must give an account to God who is ready to judge the living and the dead.' 
~ 1Peter 4 : 5

'Shall mortal man be more just than God ? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker ? Behold, He puts no trust in his servants, He charges His angels with error ; how much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth ? They are destroyed from morning to evening ; they perish forever with out any regarding it. Does not their own excellency go away ? They die, even with out wisdom.' -- Job 4 : 17 – 21

'For He need not further to consider a man, That he should go before God in judgment.' --Job 34:23

'Behold the LORD: for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth: He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth.' -- Psalm 96:13