Object and Contents
The object of this literature in general was to solve the difficulties connected with the righteousness of God and the suffering condition of His righteous servants on earth. Early Old Testament prophecy taught the need of personal and national righteousness, and foretold the ultimate blessedness of the righteous nation on the present earth. Later prophecy incorporated an idea of future vindication of present evils, often including the idea of an afterlife. Apocalyptic prophets sketched in outline the history of the world and mankind, the origin of evil and its course, and the final consummation of all things. The righteous as a nation should yet possess the earth, either via an eternal Messianic kingdom on earth, or else in temporary blessedness here and eternal blessedness hereafter. Though the individual might perish amid the disorders of this world, apocalyptic prophets taught that the righteous person would not fail to attain through resurrection the recompense that was due in the Messianic kingdom or in heaven itself.
Read more about this topic: Apocalyptic Literature
Famous quotes containing the words object and/or contents:
“There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty.”
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“Yet to speak of the whole world as metaphor
Is still to stick to the contents of the mind
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It is to stick to the nicer knowledge of
Belief, that what it believes in is not true.”
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