Shamain Webster, who lives in the suburbs outside of Dallas, has for some time seen signs of an upcoming apocalypse, as the Bible predicted.
The kingdom would rise up against the kingdom, Jesus taught his disciples in the book of Luke. Ms. Webster sees widespread political division in this country. There will be terrible events and great signs from heaven, he said. She sees biblical values disappearing. A government that does not act in the best interests of the people. And now that – a pandemic.
But Ms. Webster, 42, and an Evangelical Christian, is not afraid. She listened online to one of her favorite preachers, who called the coronavirus pandemic a “divine reset.”
“These kinds of moments really make you reevaluate everything,” she said. As everyone goes through a period of isolation, God uses them forever “to teach us and train us how to live a better life.”
For people of many faiths, and even none at all, it may have recently felt like the end of the world is near. There is not just a plague, but hundreds of billions Locusts rave about East Africa. Forest fires devastated Australia and killed countless animals. An earthquake in Utah recently rocked the Salt Lake Temple to the top of its iconic tower, dropping the golden trumpet from the right hand of angel Moroni.
But the story of the Apocalypse is an old one told by one of the oldest people. In ancient religious traditions beyond Christianity – including Judaism, Islam and Buddhism – it is a common narrative that arises in moments of social and political crises when people try to process unprecedented or shocking events.
The original word in Greek – apocalypse – means a revelation, a revelation.
“It’s not just about the end of the world,” said Jacqueline Hidalgo, president of religion at Williams College. “It helps us to see something that was previously hidden.”
As a pandemic drives the United States and much of the world into a new economic and social order, those who study and practice religion see deeper truths revealed.
The crisis shows health inequalities, class differences, and the fact that key workers in American society are among the least paid, said Jorge Juan Rodríguez V, a PhD student in the history of religion at the Union Theological Seminary.
“What is revealed is the fault lines in the system that always existed,” he said. “We are noticing it right now because the system is stressed.”
About 44 percent of likely voters in the United States see the coronavirus pandemic and economic collapse as either a wake-up call to faith, a sign of God’s coming judgment, or both. This is the result of a survey commissioned by the Joshua Fund and conducted by an evangelical group led by Joel C. Rosenberg, who writes about the end of the world, and led last week by McLaughlin & Associates, pollsters for President Trump and other Republicans has been.
David Jeremiah, a pastor who was one of President Trump’s informal evangelical advisers, recently preached in a sermon whether the corona virus was a biblical prophecy and called the pandemic “the most apocalyptic thing that has ever happened to us.”
Among Christians, one of the best-known apocalyptic tales is the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, which tells the story of the defeat of an evil animal, a final divine judgment, and the coming of a new Jerusalem.
While many Bible scholars read the book as a story about the destruction of corrupt political systems, many evangelical Christians believe that it describes the rapture, the return of Jesus, to save believers from a time of trouble.
Joshua Johnson, 46, in Keller, Texas, spends a lot of time reading the story and interpreting its symbols, which were written almost 2,000 years ago, in modern terms. He is looking for the rise of what history calls the “mark of the beast,” a demonic sign that all people must wear.
He wonders if Jesus will return by 2028, 10 years after Mr. Trump the US embassy in Israel moved to Jerusalem, which he saw as a prophetic sign. “I tell my children, I think we are this generation,” said Mr. Johnson, who visits Gateway Church, one of the best-known Evangelical churches in the country.
In the United States, where Christianity is by far the dominant religion, about 40 percent of American adults believe that Jesus will definitely or likely return to Earth by 2050, including one in five non-religious people, according to Pew Research Center.
Some evangelical Christians find hope in a divine promise that God saved them forever, a sense of security amidst so many uncertainties.
“For me personally, it’s just a reminder that God is sovereign,” said Mark Lovvorn, 65, who attends First Baptist Dallas and chairs the Providence Bank of Texas. “Regardless of what happens in the world, we have this trust.”
For centuries, religious traditions have not only given people the opportunity to understand apocalyptic moments. Over time, these hours of crisis have shaped religion itself.
Some of the earliest apocalyptic speculations can be found in Jewish writings, in stories such as the Book of Daniel, when the Hellenistic age came to the Romans around the second and first centuries BC. and Jewish communities have experienced violent persecution. Some Jews speculated again about the end of the time when the Roman army in 70 destroyed the second temple in Jerusalem.
When the early Christians turned to an external savior and the Romans further suppressed the uprisings, the Jewish leaders realized that they had to survive in the world as they knew them, said David Kraemer, chief librarian and professor of Talmud and rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary .
The rabbis developed a system in which Jews could live anywhere and under any government and live a meaningful life that was connected with neighbors and with God.
“It was Judaism that allowed the Jews to survive persecution, epidemics, medieval centuries, and the early modern age, which in some ways was the most difficult time,” said Dr. Chandler.
Every year the celebration of Passover, which starts next week and tells 10 plagues from the book Exodus, commemorates God’s salvation. The Passover Seder “says we have been in difficult circumstances before and will go beyond,” said Dr. Chandler.
In the Islamic tradition, the Quran tells stories of epidemics and a recent earthquake that will tear the earth apart, as well as stories of how to find God in the created world.
There is a difference in mainstream Islamic thought between the end of the world and the concept of the apocalypse, said Amir Hussain, professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University. The apocalypse also includes what happens when the eyes are opened.
“Look at creation, look at the oceans,” said Dr. Hussain and thought about a favorite passage in the Quran about God’s mercy. “How much better is it to have this knowledge in this life?”
In Buddhism, time is cyclic and not linear, which makes the apocalypse both the end and the beginning. “The apocalypse happens and then a new order, a new social order, a new moral order begins,” said Vesna Wallace, a professor of Buddhism at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “The story repeats itself.”
Apocalyptic stories in Buddhist scriptures have similar themes, often including an unjust ruler, social inequality, plagues and fruits that do not ripen, she explained, referring to texts from the 5th and 11th centuries AD. Blades of grass become like swords – and even the sense of taste disappears (like a suspect Symptom of coronavirus infection).
In Buddhist traditions, the apocalypse results from collective karma – the actions of everyone among themselves and towards the world – which means that the outcome can change even under the current circumstances. “Now people are friendlier to each other, they spend more time with families,” said Dr. Wallace. “It’s like a warning to change the course of action, bring back compassion and empathy, and develop social equality.”
Modern, secular American life is full of its own apocalyptic visions. Films and TV shows show civilization on the brink of extinction. “The Walking Dead” explores life in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. “The Hunger Games” presents a dystopian future after conflicts and ecological disasters have destroyed much of the world.
A blatant, binary structure – a clear good and evil, a clear before and after – speaks when society is broken, said Dr. Hidalgo, the Williams professor of religion.
“Apocalypse is a flexible script,” she said. “A feeling of common external evil can really bring people together.”
It is also a reminder that remembering past crises can provide hope across multiple traditions – that people have survived moments like this and that the truths revealed can become a call to action.
“The country’s idols are being exposed,” said Ekemini Uwan, a public theologian and co-host of the “Truth’s Table” podcast. “People advocate that we throw our grandparents to slaughter and sacrifice them on the altar of capitalism,” she added, referring to Republican leaders who have done so suggested that older Americans might be willing to sacrifice themselves to save jobs.
America has been on “spiritual life support” for too long, trusting its own invincibility, she said.
“Is it the end of the world? Maybe that’s it, maybe it’s not, ”she said. “But we have to be ready. We have to learn to count our days because we really don’t know when our last breath will be.