The Real History of the End of the World Read Online Free PDF Page A

up sex and other pleasures. As he was thrashing about in spiritual agony, Augustine heard the voice of a child chanting, “Take up and read; take up and read!” He rushed back to the letters of the Apostle Paul, left open on the table, and read, “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy; instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” ds
    This providential line caused his conversion to be total. He was baptized along with his son. They set off to return to Africa, with Augustine’s mother, Monica, and with friends and family members. While waiting for a ship at Ostia, Monica fell ill and died. This loss crushed Augustine, and he spent another year in Rome working through his grief. When he returned to Africa, his son, Adeodatus, suddenly died at the age of about fifteen.
    Afterward, perhaps to work through his grief Augustine founded a monastic retreat where he stayed until he was ordained a priest in 389. He became bishop of Hippo in 396 and remained so until his death in 430, while a Vandal army was besieging the city.
    Although in his last days Augustine may have felt that the world had to be ending, his philosophy argues that, even though the end will come, it is not possible to predict. This is most thoroughly expressed in book twenty of his monumental City of God.
    Augustine uses his rhetorical training to present each of the main points of his argument. He begins with the statements given by Jesus in the Gospels. Starting with Matthew and the parable of the wheat and the tares, Augustine deduces that Christ has promised a day of judgment at which the dead shall rise (Matthew 13:37-43). The twelve Apostles are also told that they shall sit in judgment of the twelve tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28). Augustine also cites several places in which the faithful are assured that the wicked shall be punished. dt
    Then Augustine departs from the still-current belief that the end will come soon by quoting from John (5:25): “The hour is coming and is now.” Augustine takes this to mean that the time has come for believers, who were once dead to Christ, to be reborn in the Church. “He, therefore, who would not be damned in the second resurrection, let him rise in the first.” du
    Next Augustine tackles the millenarians, who have been driving him crazy. He thinks that the idea of a thousand years of Sabbath is not bad and admits that he once believed this himself. But many people seem to have decided that the Sabbath didn’t mean going to church, praying, and appreciating creation. They thought it meant a thousand years of holiday, to party with everything one could think of to eat and drink. dv
    Patiently, Augustine explains the allegorical interpretation of the Apocalypse. We are in the millennium, he states. It began with the incarnation, at which time Satan was thrown into the abyss—that is, into the hearts of the wicked and unbelievers. He is chained and prevented from seducing the nations of the faithful. At the end of a thousand years, Satan shall be freed and gather an army to attack the Church. But Augustine is firm that the true believers shall never be fooled into following him. Some weak Christians may be swayed, but those predestined for heaven won’t waver. dw
    Therefore, Augustine is a postmillennialist. He believes that we are living in the first thousand years and at the end of it will come the Second Advent. Augustine interprets Gog and Magog of Revelation to mean the nations in which the Devil was confined. He states that it’s pointless to try to identify them with real places. He also admits that the Apocalypse seems to skip from literal to figurative terms. “No doubt, though this book is called the Apocalypse, there are in it many obscure passages to exercise the mind of the reader, and there are few passages so plain as to assist us in