gmatic assertion. A Catholic easily proclaims the veracity of transubstantiation. A Jew easily proclaims "the Lord, our God, is one God." The purpose of the Messiah, or the sequence of millennial events, or even whether these events are literal or symbolic is not nearly as easy to definitively describe.
In fact, picking out texts and declaring that they present some sequence of events for the end of time that can be categorized and placed on a time line leads to spiritual presumption. None of the texts in any of these three religions delineate the future in transparent, unambiguous prose, as future written as history. The best-known of apocalyptic writing, the book of Revelation, stands not as a collection of facts and information, but as a wash of horrific imagery. Normal communicative writing is, in this case, ill-equipped to describe what is presented to the writer. An ineffability characterizes much prophetic writing, an obscurity that seems not so much deliberate as a valiant attempt to explain the inexplicable. Such writings give a tone, a color, a flavor of where history is headed. From an exclusively Christian perspective, eschatology is best understood not as a description of the end of the world, but as a fulfillment of the salvation that was engendered in the present.
Eschatological study points in general directions, though. The three religions agree upon landmarks:
The great religions are agreed that man as he lives is not really living, is not free, not identical with himself, that consequently man's Present status is unsatisfying, sorrowful, unhappy . . . The great religions are agreed that man's final state will be such that separation and alienation from this true reality will be overcome (Kung, 1984, p. 55).
Islam, Judaism and Christianity share a universal belief that the universe is good, as it is a creation of the one true God, that each man must lead one life (as opposed to the reincarnat...