Tag Archives: destruction

The end of the world

This is a summary of what the Bible says will happen when the world ends. The predictions are scattered throughout various parts of the Bible, which makes it hard to tell how they’re all supposed to fit together. Some things just don’t fit together at all. But I’ve attempted to put everything in order and make a fairly coherent narrative out of it, using whatever chronology clues I could find in the Bible.

Fantastic beasts

In the end times, God will send many false Messiahs and false prophets. They will perform miracles, which can only be done with God’s help.1

Satan and his angels will lose a war in heaven. Then he will be thrown down to earth, where he will go to war against the Christians. A beast like a leopard with bear’s feet, a lion’s mouth, seven heads, and ten horns will come out of the sea. Satan will give the beast power over everyone for 3.5 years. All the people God arbitrarily decided not to save will worship the beast and Satan. The beast will speak against God and conquer his people.

Then a second beast with a lamb’s horns and a dragon’s voice will come out of the earth. It will perform great signs, confirming that its word is true. It will make a talking image of the first beast, and kill anyone who doesn’t worship the image. It will force all people to receive the mark of the number of the beast on their hands or foreheads.

An angel will preach the gospel to the world.2 Then Jesus will come on a cloud and harvest the earth. An angel will throw trillions of people into a winepress so Jesus can trample them to death, and a five-foot flood of blood will flow out of it. Seven more angels will bring seven plagues on the world. Festering sores will break out on the people who have the mark of the beast.3 The water will turn into blood and the Euphrates will dry up. The sun will scorch people, but the kingdom of the beast will be in darkness.

Then three frog-demons will perform signs, proving that God is on their side. They will gather the kings of the world for battle at Armageddon. God will send storms, giant hailstones, and an unprecedented, city-destroying earthquake that will split Babylon into three parts. All the islands and mountains will be removed.

The beast4 will be put in the Abyss and come back out. Then God will give power to the beast, which together with ten very briefly-reigning kings will burn down Babylon. With a sword from his mouth, Jesus will destroy the nations, the kings of the earth and their armies, and the beast and the false prophet5 will be thrown alive into hell.

God saves Jerusalem from himself

Satan will be locked in the Abyss for a thousand years, and God will resurrect Christian martyrs from every nation who have not worshiped the beast or received its mark,6 and bring them to Israel to reign alongside Jesus as priests. After the thousand years are over, God will bring unprecedented distress on everyone.

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Will the mountains and hills last forever?

The Bible says at least one mountain can’t be shaken and will last forever. It has to, because Mount Zion is where God is always going to live. And the Bible describes the hills as everlasting.

But it also says mountains erode and crumble. Mountains can be shaken and fall into the sea. God makes them quake, and they melt like wax. And it’s not just God who can move mountains. Anyone can do it if they believe they can. God will enable his people to crush mountains. And hills can be removed or melt away, so no, they are not everlasting.

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The Story of the Ten Plagues
The Exodus from Egypt

The king kills countless kids

The Israelites (the descendants of Jacob) were getting so numerous that the new Pharaoh was afraid of them. So he decided to enslave them and have all their baby boys thrown into the Nile River.

Jacob’s great-grandson Amram and his aunt Jochebed had a baby boy, so they put the baby in the Nile… inside a waterproof basket, with their daughter watching over it. Pharaoh’s daughter found the baby in the basket while she was bathing in the Nile. She adopted the baby, named him Moses, and hired his mother to nurse him for her.

After Moses grew up, he was watching his fellow Hebrews working, when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. So Moses killed the Egyptian. When Pharaoh heard about that, he tried to kill Moses. The other Hebrews weren’t happy with what Moses had done, either. So Moses ran away from Egypt and lived in Midian until that Pharaoh died.

The Israelites were still slaves under the next Pharaoh. So when Moses was 80, God spoke to him from a burning bush and told him to go tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt. On the way back to Egypt, the all-good God tried to murder Moses for some reason. But Moses’s wife touched his feet with their son’s foreskin, which convinced the never-changing God not to kill him.

Moses and his brother Aaron told Pharaoh that the God of Israel wanted his people to go out into the wilderness for a festival. But Pharaoh didn’t know that god, so he refused to let them do that.

God could have instantly overcome that obstacle in a peaceful way, like by making Pharaoh no longer want to keep his slaves, or by teleporting the people out of Egypt. But God cared more about showing off than about the freedom of his people and the wellbeing of all the innocent people of Egypt. So instead, God decided to cause a lot of unnecessary death and suffering, and to let his people continue to be mistreated in the meantime.

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The Exodus from Egypt
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The Story of Sodom and Gomorrah
Lot's Family's Mostly Unsuccessful Attempt to Avoid Being Raped and Killed

Abraham’s nephew Lot was a righteous man. He lived in the city of Sodom, where nearly everyone was so wicked that God decided to kill them all.1 So God sent two angels (who looked like men) to Sodom. Lot met them and convinced them to spend the night at his house.

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Lot's Family's Mostly Unsuccessful Attempt to Avoid Being Raped and Killed
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The Story of the Torture of Job
The Truth About God

God makes a deal with the devil

One day, Satan went up to see God, and they talked about a man named Job,1 who God said was the most righteous and godly person in the world. Satan was of the opinion that Job only seemed so good to God because God was so good to Job. He said if God would curse Job, then Job would curse God. The all-knowing God wanted to find out if Satan was right, so he gave Satan permission to do whatever he wanted to Job, as long as he didn’t physically harm him.

So Satan sent raiders to steal Job’s 500 donkeys, 1000 oxen, and 3000 camels. God helped him by sending fire from heaven to burn up Job’s 7000 sheep. Satan also sent a strong wind to knock down a house and kill Job’s ten children, and he got most of Job’s many servants killed too. Then God made everyone else Job knew shun him. Job responded by tearing his clothes off and worshiping God. Righteous Job didn’t think God had done anything wrong by letting Satan murder his children.

When Satan came to see God again, God pointed out that Job still loved him, even after Satan had convinced God to destroy nearly everything Job had for no reason. Satan explained that Job was too selfish to care about his children and servants dying. But if God attacked Job personally, that would be enough to make him curse God. The all-good God decided to see if Satan was right, so he gave Satan permission to do whatever he wanted to Job, as long as he didn’t kill him.

So Satan covered Job with painful sores. God helped him by giving Job horrible nightmares, and sending wicked people to beat him up, spit at him, and laugh at him. Job got a fever, and his skin started changing color and peeling off. His wife advised him to curse God for ruining his life, so God would put him out of his misery. Job admitted that God was the cause of his trouble, but he didn’t see why his all-good God should be expected to do only good things all the time.

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The Truth About God
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The Story of Noah’s Ark
The One Where God Decides to Kill Everybody

More than 1500 years after the perfect God created his perfect world, he realized that creating humans had been a bad idea, because humans are evil. To correct his mistake, God decided to kill all the humans, and all the animals too, for some reason. But there was one righteous man in the world who God didn’t want to kill, and his name was Noah.

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The One Where God Decides to Kill Everybody
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