Looking for the Second Coming - Part Two

This article continues the history begun in my previous post.  I’ll begin with a few definitions.  “Eschaton” refers to the end of the world, or the end of the present age.  The study of beliefs about the eschaton is “eschatology.”  Jewish prophets wrote of “this world” and “the world to come.”  By the intertestamental period, that is, the three or four centuries immediately preceding the birth of Jesus, Jewish thought had developed a two-stage eschaton, in which the arrival of a Savior (Messiah) would bring a temporary period of Messianic rule on earth, to be followed by resurrection into eternal life with God.  The cataclysmic disruption which is understood to usher in the Messianic age is referred to as “the apocalypse,” and apocalyptic literature deals with predicted events of that time.