End of Days by Sylvia Browne

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 9th, 2022 in Stories

Jesus died for our sins, was resurrected, and is enthroned beside His Father in heaven;
the Bible makes salvation available to everyone if they’ll be born again through genuine repentance and faith, which are both sacred duties and inseparable graces;
Christian baptism is the immersion in water of a believer and that it is a prerequisite to full membership in the church;
the Four Freedoms put into words by Baptist historian Walter Shurden are to be honored: soul freedom (meaning that the soul is capable of making its own decisions regarding faith); church freedom (there should be no outside interference in the practices of local churches); Bible freedom (with the help of the most reliable resources available, each individual is entitled to their own interpretation of the Bible); and religious freedom (each person is free to choose their own religion, or their own lack of one).

In 1833, the Reverend John Newton Brown drew up a document called the New Hampshire Confession of Faith, based on which Baptists could organize a missionary society. There have been some revisions during the 175 years since the Confession of Faith was originally written, but it’s still widely accepted, and it concludes with a clear, concise statement of Baptist beliefs about the end of days:

We believe that the end of the world is approaching; that at the last day Christ will descend from heaven, and raise the dead from the grave to final retribution; that a solemn separation will then take place; that the wicked will be adjudged to endless punishment, and the righteous to endless joy; and that this judgment will fix forever the final state of men in heaven or hell, or principles of righteousness.

Jainism

The religion of Jainism, with a current worldwide membership thought to exceed twelve million, originated in ancient India, probably around the sixth century BC. Its roots are still being traced to this day as India’s oldest writings continue to be discovered and translated, but it’s a commonly held belief that Jainism was one of the driving forces behind the inception of Buddhism. Unlike Buddhism, though, it has no single founder, and its doctrines, or truths, evolved and were revealed by a series of “tirthankars,” or teachers. Possibly the last and most devout of those teachers was Vardhamana Mahavira, born in 599 BC. He is sometimes credited with starting Jainism, but historians find it far more likely that the religion had already been in existence for centuries when Mahavira came along and devoted his life to spreading the word.

Jains believe that all living beings, both human and nonhuman, have eternal souls, and that all souls are equal. They consider killing another human being, no matter what the circumstance, to be an act of unspeakable horror, and they require that every person who practices Jainism, from the monks and the nuns to the general membership, be strictly vegetarian.

Their emphasis on the concept of karma, on responsibility and consequence for their actions, is intensely important to the Jains’ faith. Karma may or may not manifest itself in the same lifetime as the action that created it, but there’s no escaping it, and sowing what we reap includes physical, verbal, and mental acts.

Jainism teaches that energies, called tapas, are created by the interaction of the living with the nonliving, and these energies are the engine that drives the constant cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Jains call that cycle samsara. The ultimate goal in Jainism is to lead a life of such exemplary discipline that they can transcend samsara, and the unavoidable hardship and sorrow of it, and live in the blissful perfection of moksha, the Jains’ word for nirvana, or heaven.