ReligiousTolerance.org has a page about Jesus and St. Paul’s predictions about the end of the world that is worthwhile reading for a couple reasons.

First of all, we see an unusual flip-flop between liberal and conservative interpreters of the Bible. Ordinarily, we are accustomed to more conservative (Fundamentalist) Christians adhering to a literal interpretation of Scripture, while liberals advocate a much more open-ended, usually symbolic analysis. In this case though, it’s rather the opposite.

Jesus, in particular, seemed to be rather explicit about the end of the world, or the Coming of the Kingdom of God. In all four Gospels we see a variation upon this theme as spoken by Jesus in Matthew 16:28:

[…] there shall be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

Paul was a little less direct in his wording in the famous Thessalonians passage upon which the Rapture fantasy is based:

Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Later in Thessalonians, he urges the recipients of the letter to stay on guard for the coming end:

But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober

Paul’s words you might be able to argue that he’s speaking in a more general term when he says “we”. But Jesus seems pretty straightforward when he says that some of the people standing in front of him will be affected by these events.

Liberal Christians, on this matter, take the unusual hardline literalist stance in interpreting these passages. They say that Jesus himself expressly stated his expectation that the end of time was imminent. Seeing as time did not end (although according to Philip K. Dick, it did), conservatives find themselves in something of a double-bind when it comes to this passage.

Conservative/Fundamentalist Christians believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, plus they believe that since Jesus is a member of the divine trinity, he is incapable of error. As such, they go to their old fall-back explanation that the Bible isn’t wrong, the interpretation is wrong. This requires them to move into the unfamiliar world (for them) of doing symbolic backflips in order to decode the meaning. Among other far out explanations, I’ve actually seen people honestly suggest that St. Paul didn’t write his letter to the Thessalonians - rather he wrote it to 21st century humanity.

Both sides of this argument though are making a critical oversight, in my opinion. Liberals are assuming that the Apocalypse is necessarily a literal temporal event existing somewhere along the time axis. Actually, both sides are making that error. Liberals are just using it to downplay what they are unable to symbolically decode. Conservatives too seem to be completely inept in their ability to understand the possible meanings of these passages.

Let’s go back to this quote from Jesus for a second though:

[…] there shall be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

The phrasing of it triggered a connection to a saying in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Some people say that this lost Gospel of Thomas contains an alternative or perhaps untainted version of Jesus’s teachings. The Gospel opens with:

These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.

And he said, “Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.”

Later on, in saying 108, Jesus says:

“Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him.”

Both of these Gnostic sayings represent the idea that the teachings of Jesus contained more than meets the eye. That if you could decode or figure out what these secret meanings were, then you’d be granted eternal life. The orthodox Christian sects generally refute such theories, saying that Jesus granted us eternal life through his sacrifice on the Cross (a thoroughly archonic concept) rather than through any esoteric wisdom.

While I’m no expert in Biblical languages, it seems striking to me that Jesus would use (the Aramaic equivalent of) the phrase “shall not taste death” in reference to both his canonical mention of the Apocalypse, and his non-canonical teachings which grant eternal life. In the gnostic Gospel of Thomas there are two other sayings which may shed some light on this mystery.

3 Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the (Father’s) kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

[…]

113 His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?”

“It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.”

This is especially important to our discussion since an alternate wording can be found in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus says:

Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power

In the gnostic scriptures, the Kingdom of God is said to be simultaneously inside of you, and spread out upon the earth around you, yet unseen. Fantastic Planet has a great explanation of saying 113 from the Thomas Gospel, which includes:

Jesus indicates a process which occurs in that remarkable timeless fashion that can’t be expressed using our limited verb tenses– the kingdom has been/is/will be eternally spreading out “across” the Materia through the medium of the Logos, within the body of the Pleroma. […]

we shouldn’t be looking for the “end times” within history. It’s because we can’t. Doing so places the Kingdom of Heaven within the confines of the illusion, an act that causes the soul to depend upon the flesh. When one divorces the process of gnosis and redemption from its eternal nature and tries to stick it within history, one commits a, perhaps the, demiurgic act.

This is the summary we find based on everything we’ve learned thus far. Gnosis, redemption, resurrection, renascence, the Logos, the Pleroma, eschatology, everything we’ve been taught has been/is/will be occuring within each of us every second of every day while we’re stuck within the Materia. It has been/is/will be occuring within the Materia itself as a gradual process, spreading throughout the corruption of the Black Iron Prison through the medium of the God.

This gnostic concept is even included in the mainstream canonical version of the Bible, although you almost never hear anybody bring it up. Luke 17:20-21 states:

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

This is essentially why all religious apocalyptic material comes in the form of a vision. We have the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelations in the New Testament. Both revolve around the dreams and ecstatic visions of two gifted prophets. They dip into the wells of non-ordinary reality, exploring their consciousness, and come back with signs and wonders from the magical interior Kingdom of God.

With this in mind, consider this thought: the “end of time” happens at the end of the linear timeline. And according to most orthodox or unorthodox accounts, the “end of time” could happen at any moment. To me, this seems to indicate the Apocalypse fantasy might be used as a mystical handbook for escaping from the confines of linear time, and moving into the so-called Kingdom of God or the timeless state of spiritual consciousness known as the Dreamtime. As such, another way that we could read texts such as the Book of Revelations is as a spiritual instruction book, detailing for us using symbolic entities the challenges which we will face in freeing ourselves from the bonds of linear time, and approaching the timeless transcendent Kingdom of God.