Few passages in the entire Bible have generated as much sustained theological debate as the twentieth chapter of the Book of Revelation. In six verses, the text describes an angel binding Satan with a great chain and casting him into a bottomless pit for a thousand years, while the souls of martyrs and faithful believers … Read more
Something unusual is happening in mosques, living rooms, and online communities across the Muslim world. Millions of people who would never have described themselves as interested in Islamic end-times theology are now watching videos, reading hadith commentaries, and asking a question that was once the preserve of specialized scholars: are the signs of Qiyamah appearing … Read more
In 1948, something happened that had never happened before in recorded human history. A people who had been scattered across the entire world for nearly 1,900 years came back to their ancestral homeland and declared a state. Not a new state. Their old one. On the same land, in the same city, with the same … Read more
Few words in human history carry as much weight as Armageddon. The moment you say it, people know what you mean. The end. The final war. The last chapter of civilization. It shows up in news headlines, disaster movies, political speeches, and religious sermons all around the world. It is one of the most searched … Read more
Something real is happening right now. Searches for “Day of Judgment Islam,” “Yawm al-Qiyamah,” and “signs of Qiyamah” are climbing every month. Islamic content on YouTube covering the stages of Judgment Day is pulling in tens of millions of views. Mosques and online Islamic circles are reporting that questions about the end times, about the … Read more
Ask most people what Judaism says about life after death and they will tell you one of two things: either that Judaism focuses on this world and does not really say much about the next one, or that it teaches the immortality of the soul. Both answers miss what is actually one of the most … Read more
No book in the Bible has been read more, argued over more, or misunderstood more than the Book of Revelation. It sits at the end of the Christian scriptures like a sealed door that everyone wants to open, and for two thousand years people have been trying to force that door with every tool available: … Read more
Few figures in the Islamic tradition generate as much hope, debate, and genuine curiosity as the Imam Mahdi. Across Muslim communities worldwide, from South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa, from the Persian Gulf to the diaspora communities of the West, the question of who is Imam Mahdi occupies a central place in religious imagination and in … Read more
Every few generations, Jewish history produces a moment of collective holding of breath. A figure emerges, or rumor of one spreads, and for a brief and electric season, ordinary Jews from Portugal to Poland, from Yemen to New York, begin to ask the same question: could this be him? Could this be the Mashiach, the … Read more
Imagine the scene that has been described in tens of millions of copies of the Left Behind novels. Planes falling from the sky because pilots have vanished mid-flight. Highways full of driverless cars. Hospitals where surgeons have disappeared from operating theatres. Every Christian in the world suddenly and silently removed from the earth, leaving behind … Read more