Here is the good news. The old age of exclusive power, excessive pelf, ethnic injustice, despots, and tyrants is dying. This old age is in its death-throes and thrashing about in panic.
This essay is for those people who are searching, questioning, exploring, and seeking teachings joined with methodology to pursue life, liberty and happiness. It is for those who know in their hearts that there must be more to life than just greed, cult members of religious ideology, vain fame, or exclusiveness. Humanity needs the foundation of “rights and responsibilities.” joined with adaptable guidelines.
Humanity gains the right to become gods (“ye are gods” – as Jesus said in John 10:34) only when they act in the responsible manner (love God, love Neighbor, love Oneself – as Jesus affirmed). This essay is for those people who are building this new age as mentioned by all the great humanity’s heroes.
The new age of increasing transparent governance, economic fairness, social justice, and relevant spirituality has been born. This will bring our desired future! However with both processes (the death-throes of the old and the birth-pangs of the new) occurring simultaneously, this struggle of each for survival creates great turmoil. This turmoil indicates great changes are occurring.
For many centuries people lived in fear because they were incorrectly told that their hero, Jesus, had talked about the end of the world and the coming horror. After that, he would return to bring in his kingdom of peace and justice.
Because this prophecy of the hero’s return was greatly anticipated, there have been more than 175 definite dates predicted for this end of the world– starting from 66AD, with one recent pastor even predicting the return of the hero, Jesus, 12 different times.
The latest guess for this event, called the rapture, was predicted for 2021, but never occurred! This gruesome horror event has been called the end-times, the end of the world. Yet it is still appealing to some religious faithful. Sadly this comes from their unconscious, unrestrained gruesome imagination.
The end of the world has not happened, nor has our super hero, Jesus, returned. But great turmoil and catastrophes have occurred every centuries with a great amount of pain and suffering. The part of the prophecy about, “wars and rumors of war”, has kept alive the hope that our super hero will return and bring peace and justice. For some people this has excused them from working for justice and equality.
As a youth, I wondered why my hero, Jesus, would say something so impossible, – that the world will end. This hope for his return at the end of the world (αἰών, “age”) has motivated a lot of people openly and subconsciously to engage in belligerent interaction with others. They are committed to staging a political or military situation to force their hero, Jesus, to return – on their time table.
They yearn to save for themselves their exclusive world. Because they have been ridiculed, rejected, and despised, this event will prove they are right and give their life meaning and purpose. Yet it is an ugly darkness festering inside them.
As I got older, I read that many other religious traditions (five more) are also engaged in the same activities of predicting the return of their super hero in the future.
But Jesus, never actually said the end of the “world.” The Greek word, αἰών, aion was used, which means the end of the “age.”
Most Christians are not aware of the colossal catastrophic error that this incorrect translation has caused. The word aion, αἰών in Ancient Greek is “age,” which was translated into the English word, “world.”
Therefore people were not preparing for the new “age” that Jesus spoke of, but are still planning for the end of the “world.” Any religious person who believes that the end is coming, doesn’t invest in the future. It goes without saying, there is a huge galactic space/time difference between the end of an “age” and the end of the “world.” The αἰών, “age” involves time, the “world” involves space! One word makes a world of difference.
There are many more of these catastrophic translation errors. They have created paradigms of delusions misdirecting the course of humanity set out by one of the super heroes. A super hero is one who puts the welfare of humanity above his life. This is why we all bow down to the world’s super heroes.
This mistranslation of one of our super hero’s words has lead to anticipation of gloom and doom. The end of the “world” hypothesis has an extremely bleak view – like going down with the ship, in total chaos. This pessimistic view of the future is one of the reasons why there are tens of millions of followers leaving religion, mostly Christianity. They see no purpose to their lives if this world is fated to end in chaos and death.
As a little boy my father grew up in Italy. Present even in his small village there was the crazy talk of religious doomsayers. One day his small village was abuzz with the impending end of the world. Someone had proclaimed that the prophecy meant that tonight would be the end.
Well, my father being an Italian, loved food, especially pastry. Being a trusting child he thought to himself, “The world is going to end. I want to eat some good pastry before the end. I don’t know if there is any Italian pastry in Heaven.”
So he smashed his little piggy bank and bought as much of the best pastry as his money could buy. He then went up the little hill outside his village and waited with the entire village for the end of the world to come. He enjoyed his pastry. He waited all night. He went back to work the next day. My father did not see any purpose of saving his money, because the end was coming.
Just like today some people do not see any purpose in saving our environment, because their super hero, Jesus, is going to return and fix everything – after he destroys those wicked non-believers. Others also wait for someone else to fix things.
Now my little story. When I was in high school, one of the reasons I did not study at all for my French class was I did not see any purpose to study or plan for the future because the world was going to end. I believed that any time now my hero, Jesus, would come back to destroy the wicked. Why should I bother to study when the world was coming to an END! I got an F for the year.
Fortunately I realized my belief was only a belief with no truth, based upon the incorrect translation of αἰών aion (“age”). So I studied then for the rest of my time in high school. Much later, I even got my College degree. Thank you Jesus.
We were told the Mayans also predicted the end of the “world.” It seemed to grab the attention of the news. However, it was not the end of the “world”, but the end of a 5,126 year span of time recorded in their calendar. Their calendar is an amazingly precise system of reckoning of time in regards to the precession of the equinoxes caused by the cyclic precession of Earth’s axis of rotation. Their ancient calculations were only 142 years off in 25,772 years. Even the Mayans didn’t help me out of planning for the future.
Some political and religious leaders occupying positions of power and authority do not want to relinquish their power, prestige, and lifestyle. They talk in terms of the end of the “world” because they sense their world is ending. And they are accurate to rightfully call these people who demand changes as “new agers.”
The new agers are engaged in breaking free of the shackles of dogma and despair; to take back their birthright and to transform the organizations that preserve injustice and inequality. They work together to transform our society into inclusive justice and equality for all now – not just pastry in the sky later.
“Spirituality is not a teaching, its the way you exist” Sadhguru.
The timeless message of my hero, Jesus, (“ye are gods”,- as Jesus said in John 10:34) is relevant today as it was centuries ago. It will survive and thrive for many centuries and more. What my hero taught was simple yet comprehensive: A purpose for our lives, respect for neighbors, and love for the Creator. But in order to make the effort to live by these, we need to know that our hero did not prophesied the end of the world. This is the first order of business.
Dedicated to Humanity