Eschatology may be described as the end-time dreams of religious peoples and cultures with a vision towards the future that is often connected to the present. Existentially rendered, eschatology is the hopeful longing for a golden age and a time beyond the Sitz im Leben of the author, whose future reality nevertheless is codified in the images and symbols of the present.
Yet all eschatologies rely on hypothetical realities that attempt
to create severe breaks with the reality they present even while they remain intimately close to the language and imagery of their time. Most extraordinary, and what I want to explore here, is that so many
eschatologies that are culturally and geographically distant from one another
bear striking similarities.
Are these similarities merely accidental? Are they guided by some universal revelation? Or do they speak
to a supernal longing in each one of us for an age of salvation, justice, or
peace? An age in which we matter because what we believe is finally validated.
Let’s take a very brief look at five possible eschatologies as they appear in
the major religions of the world, that either help shape or form a part of the overall experience of their religions.
Buddhism
Known as the manifestation of the Buddhas in ten directions, Buddha Maitreya is the savior of humanity in the Buddhist tradition. He comes at a time when Buddhism has been forgotten
from the earth and thus he returns to deliver its message once again. Whether
or not the passage in the Pali canon where this occurs is apocryphal, it is
accepted as part of the repertoire among the three major traditions. In the
passage from the Maitreyavyakarana, the world is thought to look very much like
the ideal Buddhist paradise, in which men will fall into trancelike
meditations, their cravings swept underfoot, and their morality will be amplified. They
will live without homes, families, and possessions. All of these of course are
recognizable Buddhist ephemera. No doubt in every religion, heaven, hell, and
every unexamined meta-reality in between looks much like the religious reality’s
doctrine or image of their idealistic conditions which they fight to keep stabilized
in this world.
Christianity 
In Christianity, Jesus returns at a time when anti-Christ destroys the world so that he instigates a battle between God and the devil. Jesus returns as a warrior king to set the world right once again. He reestablishes God’s place on earth. While many Christians attempt to sophisticate and sanitize this eschatology by placing it squarely in the gospels as something Jesus brought into the here-and-now (or a form of realized eschatology to deconstruct completely the language of the epoch in which it was written), it is clear that the Book of Revelation uses the kind of imagistic creatures and drama that other cultures also imagine in their own scriptures and sacred writings. All peoples will eventually come to worship Jesus in Jerusalem.
Judaism
Judaism requires that the world completely repair itself (tikkun olam) so that the ground is ripe
and sanctified for the return of Messiah. This end-times figure, whether Elijah
redivivus or not, is very much a
co-signer to the tradition of Messiah that held three primary goals as far back
as David: A House for the Lord, a House for David, and the Establishment of
Land. Thus, a third temple will be constructed, the Messiah will be someone
from the House of David, descendant from his line, and all Jews will eventually
come back to the land they are to possess. And what of the rest of us? Well,
God dwelling among his people and the world knowing who God is will come to him
and worship him, although the manner is unclear. It does not necessarily seem
like mass conversion will be necessary. Maybe like Cyrus the Great, God’s first
messiah, he will only require tribute. This tripartite formula is also found in Christianity's Book of Revelation.
Hinduism
Kalki, the final incarnation of Vishnu offers one such eschatological
vision in Hinduism. Kalki, like Jesus comes on a white horse with a sword (in his hand not like Christianity in his mouth). This
metahistorical narrative takes place after the Kali Yuga, or this present age,
in which death and destruction are the rule and not the exception. The golden
age, or more accurately Satya Yuga, comes as a time in which peace will rule and
all violence will cease. Like our Jewish friends who believe in the
reestablishment of the temple, so our Indian friends taking from their own practices envision the end as one in which meditation is
supremely important and as an inevitable establishment as something universal.
"Lord Kalki, the Lord of the
universe, riding His swift horse Devadatta and, sword in hand, will travel over
the earth exhibiting His eight mystic powers and eight special qualities of
Godhead. Displaying His unequalled effulgence and riding with great speed, He
will kill by the millions those thieves and rogues who have dared dress as
kings."
Islam
Mahdi, in Islam, comes only from the extra-canonical
hadiths, where he is said to assist Jesus in his parousia (second coming). In
numerous views that accept the Madhi, he brings in an Islamic age of
law and various practices intrinsic to Islamic ritual. Like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and even Buddhism, it comes as the ultimate vengeance against a religious world that
is divided. Umma Salam, a wife of Muhammad, was said to have stated that the
Madhi will wipe out all superstitions save Islam. Unbelievers will come to
believe and follow Sharia Law.
Some Final Thoughts
In ages where such religions have been marginalized in their
earthly forms, their eternal forms no doubt offer a kind of reprisal in which
not only they but all people take over the characteristics of their religions.
In effect, it is a type of victory narrative.
In all of these eschatologies, they immediately follow our
age, which makes it all the more imperative that we as the generation that is going to bring all this upon us act soberly and responsibly. Of course in religions where there are no channels or
cycles of rebirth, it makes sense to think that from the Axial Age onward (900 –
500 BCE) when the knowledge of religion increases and ever sophisticates,
humankind represents the zenith of its own longings.
Those like Rudyard Kipling who say that East and West are
too far apart, forget that there were incursions, even in the Axial Age, where religions touched. For example, the kingdom of the Buddhist Gandhara was interdicted by Greek Hellenistic
influences, typified in much of the architecture. It was during this time that
glimpses of Maitreya could be seen most prominently often in some combination with Greek gods.
Could this be because the Greeks, who followed Christ hundreds of years later,
were interested connoisseurs of religion, as we see in the melding of the Logos
of Stoicism with the Messiah of Judaism? All food for thought…
In the end (excuse the pun), there is much in common with the way religious peoples think about themselves and the end of the world. Many see a victory for their way of life, their ideology, etc.
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