The End is Near?

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Are you interested in the parts of history that remain a mystery? Do you want to learn more about the historical myths and misconceptions used to prop up belief today?

I'm Nathaniel Lloyd. In my podcast, Historical Blindness, I delve into all of these topics, sharing puzzling tales from the past and examining hoaxes, conspiracy theories and misremembered events that provide insight into modern politics and religion. New episodes every two weeks find historical blindness on most podcast players and platforms.

Dan McClellan (0:37)

If you hear people talking about these prophecies in Revelation, in Daniel, in Ezekiel, Gog and Magog or Russia and Iran, no, they're not. If you hear people talking about this to try to predict the future, they do not have the first clue what they're talking about and none of what they're saying is accurate.

Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:03)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:05)

And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we seek to increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:16)

Man, I'm ready to combat. I'm going into combat here.

Dan McClellan (1:20)

Let's do it. We're gonna minimize the militant, the military metaphors to some degree, but I guess I do use combat, so.

Confront, I could use that.

Dan Beecher (1:31)

Confront, okay. Battle, no, it's all, we got nothing, man.

Dan McClellan (1:35)

It's hard to avoid that, yeah, all right, well.

Dan Beecher (1:36)

Yeah, it's tricky.

Dan McClellan (1:37)

Yeah, we're gonna try not to lean too much into it, then.

Dan Beecher (1:41)

But today's gonna be a fun one. Today, it's end times, you know? I don't know if people are aware of this, but there are certain...

Dan McClellan (1:50)

We're living in the end times.

Dan Beecher (1:51)

There are certain events occurring right now that are leading a lot of people to be talking end times talk.

Dan McClellan (1:59)

Imagine that, unlike the last 2,000 years of history.

Dan Beecher (2:03)

Right, exactly. Every time there's any world event, somebody's gonna come up with a way to make that the end times. But we're gonna be talking second coming. We're gonna be talking rapture.

It's gonna be exciting. I'm excited about it.

Dan McClellan (2:19)

All right.

Dan Beecher (2:20)

I think we should just dive in with our new segment, X Event 2

Dan McClellan (2:27)

X Event 2, which as everybody knows, means after the fact. This is-

Dan Beecher (2:32)

I feel like it's a Harry Potter spell. I'm pretty sure.

Dan McClellan (2:37)

It's X Event 2, not X Event 2

Dan Beecher (2:43)

But yes, what we're talking about right now to launch into this is some prophecies because I wanted to get into with you, Dan, the idea of the second coming of Jesus. It's a thing that is talked about much. It is a very important event in Christianity and in the sort of, I don't want to say the lore. In anyway, in what's happening in Christianity. In Christianity, it's everything. It's the Messiah, but this time, in the person of Jesus or something. So let's talk about where the idea comes from, what it means, because there are a couple of things that I find confusing about it, to be perfectly honest.

And maybe I'll just point those out as we go along.

So why don't you launch in and give us a quick primer on Jesus coming back?

Dan McClellan (3:51)

I will do my best.

It's going to get complicated, though, because there are the positions that Christians have had historically on this, and particularly now in the 21st century, the 19th and 20th century saw the innovation of very new approaches to this question. And so we have different categories and subcategories within subcategories of ways of thinking about this. But to go back to the primary texts, the foundation of this is what is called the Olivet Discourse from the Synoptic Gospels. This is found in Matthew 24, in Mark 13, and in Luke 21 And scholars are in pretty widespread agreement that Mark is the earliest gospel. So our earliest version of this discourse is found in Mark 13 And this is where we get the wars and rumors of wars and things like that that are very commonly repeated every time something goes on in the Holy Land.

Dan Beecher (4:58)

Can you answer something for me? What is a rumor of a war?

What does that even mean?

Dan McClellan (5:04)

Yeah, that's the King James Version's rendering the word there means report, report or rumor. So you will hear wars and you will hear reports about wars.