1.
Millennialism
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Premillennialism, in Christian eschatology, is the belief that Jesus will physically return to the earth to gather His saints before the Millennium, a literal thousand-year golden age of peace. This return is referred to as the Second Coming, the doctrine is called premillennialism because it holds that Jesus physical return to earth will occur prior to the inauguration of the Millennium. For the last century, the belief has been common in Evangelicalism according to surveys on this topic, Premillennialism is based upon a literal interpretation of Revelation 20, 1–6 in the New Testament, which describes Jesus reign in a period of a thousand years. It views this future age as a time of fulfillment for the hope of Gods people as given in the Old Testament. Post-millennialism, for example, agrees with premillennialism about the future reign of Christ. Postmillennialists hold to the view that the second coming will happen after the millennium, historically Christian premillennialism has also been referred to as chiliasm or millenarianism. The current religious term premillennialism did not come into use until the mid-19th century, the concept of a temporary earthly messianic kingdom at the Messiahs coming was not an invention of Christianity. Instead it was an interpretation developed within the apocalyptic literature of early Judaism. In Judaism during the Christian intertestamental period, there was a distinction between the current age and the “age to come”. The “age to come” was commonly viewed as a nationalistic Golden Age in which the hopes of the prophets would become a reality for the nation of Israel, on the surface, the biblical prophets revealed an “age to come” which was monolithic. Seemingly the prophets did not write of a two-phase eschaton consisting of a messianic age followed by an eternal state. However, that was the concept that some Jewish interpreters did derive from their exegesis and their conclusions are found in some of the literature and theology of early Judaism within the centuries both before and during the development of the Christian New Testament. This work likely dates to the early 2nd century and shows a schematization of the divine history divided into ten periods of time called “weeks. ”In the apocalypse. However, after the week, the temporary earthly messianic age begins. After the temporary messianic kingdom, the creation of the new heavens, Second Esdras likely dates from soon after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. The apocryphal book was apparently an attempt to explain the difficulties associated with the destruction of Jerusalem, during one of the visions in the book, Ezra receives a revelation from the angel Uriel. The angel explains that prior to the last judgment, the Messiah will come, seven days after this cataclysmic event, the resurrection and the judgment will occur followed by the eternal state. The Jewish belief in a temporary messianic age continued during
2.
William Miller (preacher)
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William Miller was an American Baptist preacher who is credited with beginning the mid-19th century North American religious movement known as the Millerites. After his prophecies of the Second Coming did not occur as expected in the 1840s, new heirs of his message emerged, including the Advent Christians, later movements found inspiration in Millers emphasis on Bible prophecy and the Bahai faith believes his predictions of 1844 events to be accurate. Miller was born on February 15,1782, in Pittsfield and his parents were Captin Miller, a veteran of the American Revolution, and Paulina, the daughter of Elnathan Pelps. When he was four years old, his family moved to rural Low Hampton, Miller was educated at home by his mother until the age of nine, when he attended the newly established East Poultney District School. Miller is not known to have any type of formal study after the age of eighteen. In 1803, Miller married Lucy Smith and moved to her hometown of Poultney. While in Poultney, Miller was elected to a number of civil offices, in 1809 he was elected to the office of Deputy Sheriff and at an unknown date was elected Justice of the Peace. Miller served in the Vermont militia and was commissioned a lieutenant on July 21,1810 and he was reasonably well off, owning a house, land, and at least two horses. Shortly after his move to Poultney, Miller rejected his Baptist heritage and they put into my hands the works of Voltaire, Hume, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, and other deistical writers. At the outbreak of the War of 1812, Miller raised a company of men and traveled to Burlington. He transferred to the 30th Infantry Regiment in the army of the United States with the rank of lieutenant. Miller spent most of the war working as a recruiter and on February 1,1814 and he saw his first action at the Battle of Plattsburgh, where vastly outnumbered American forces overcame the British. The fort I was in was exposed to every shot, bombs, rockets, and shrapnel shells fell as thick as hailstones, he said. One of these many shots had exploded two feet from him, wounding three of his men and killing another, but Miller survived without a scratch. Miller came to view the outcome of battle as miraculous. He later wrote, It seemed to me that the Supreme Being must have watched over the interests of this country in an especial manner, so surprising a result, against such odds, did seem to me like the work of a mightier power than man. After the war, and following his discharge from the army on June 18,1815, shortly after his return, however, he moved with his family back to Low Hampton, where he purchased a farm. Throughout this time period Miller was deeply concerned with the question of death and this reflection upon his own mortality followed the recent deaths of his father and sister, and his experiences as a soldier in the war
3.
Millerism
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The Millerites were the followers of the teachings of William Miller, who in 1833 first shared publicly his belief that the Second Advent of Jesus Christ would occur in roughly the year 1843-1844. Miller was a farmer, a Baptist lay preacher, and student of the Bible. Miller spent years of study of symbolic meaning of the prophecies of Daniel, especially Daniel 8,14. Miller believed that the cleansing of the sanctuary represented the Earths destruction by fire at Christs Second Coming. Using the year-day method of interpretation, Miller became convinced that the 2,300 day period started in 457 BC with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. Simple calculation then indicated that this period would end about 1843 and this document remained private for many years. Miller did eventually share his views, first to a few friends privately, initially he was disappointed at the lack of response from those he spoke to. To my astonishment, I found very few who listened with any interest, occasionally, one would see the force of the evidence, but the great majority passed it by as an idle tale. Miller states that he began his lecturing in the village of Dresden, Washington County, New York, some 16 miles from his home. However, as Sylvester Bliss points out, The printed article from which this is copied was written in 1845, by an examination of his correspondence, it appears that he must have begun to lecture in August 1831. So that this date is a mistake of the printer or an error in Mr. Millers memory, in 1832, Miller submitted a series of sixteen articles to the Vermont Telegraph—a Baptist paper. These he. scattered, the most of them gratuitously, sending them in reply to letters of inquiry, from 1840 onward, Millerism was transformed from an obscure, regional movement into a national campaign. The key figure in this transformation was Joshua Vaughan Himes—the pastor of Chardon Street Chapel in Boston, though Himes did not fully accept Miller’s ideas until 1842, he established the fortnightly paper Signs of the Times to publicize them. The first edition was published on February 28,1840, with Himes as editor and it continues to be published by the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a monthly evangelistic magazine under the same name. Periodical literature played an important part in the rapid and widespread dissemination of Millerite beliefs, from first to last the power of the press, in this particular form, was one of the foremost factors in the success of this now vigorous, expanding movement. In addition to the Signs of the Times based in Boston, Millerite papers were published in numerous cities including New York, Philadelphia, Rochester, Cleveland, There were at least 48 Millerite periodicals that circulated in the period leading up to the Great Disappointment. The majority of these, however, were quite short-lived—often a new paper was started whenever a Millerite evangelistic campaign entered a new area, as well as publications based on geography, the Millerites issued various papers targeting different groups. The Advent Message to the Daughters of Zion focused on female readers, the Advent Shield was a more academically orientated paper published in Boston and edited by Joshua Vaughan Himes, Sylvester Bliss, and Apollos Hale
4.
Political party
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A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in the government. The party agrees on some proposed policies and programmes, with a view to promoting the good or furthering their supporters interests. While there is some international commonality in the way political parties are recognized, and in how they operate, there are many differences. Many political parties have a core, but some do not. In many democracies, political parties are elected by the electorate to run a government, many countries, such as Germany and India, have several significant political parties, and some nations have one-party systems, such as China and Cuba. The United States is in practice a two-party system, but with smaller parties also participating. Its two most important parties are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, the first political factions, cohering around a basic, if fluid, set of principles, emerged from the Exclusion Crisis and Glorious Revolution in late 17th century England. The leader of the Whigs was Robert Walpole, who maintained control of the government in the period 1721–1742, as the century wore on, the factions slowly began to adopt more coherent political tendencies as the interests of their power bases began to diverge. The Whig partys initial base of support from the aristocratic families widened to include the emerging industrial interests. A major influence on the Whigs were the political ideas of John Locke. They acted as a united, though unavailing, opposition to Whig corruption and they finally regained power with the accession of George III in 1760 under Lord Bute. Out of this chaos, the first distinctive parties emerged, the first such party was the Rockingham Whigs under the leadership of Charles Watson-Wentworth and the intellectual guidance of the political philosopher Edmund Burke. A coalition including the Rockingham Whigs, led by the Earl of Shelburne, took power in 1782, the new government, led by the radical politician Charles James Fox in coalition with Lord North, was soon brought down and replaced by William Pitt the Younger in 1783. It was now that a genuine two-party system began to emerge, by the time of this split the Whig party was increasingly influenced by the ideas of Adam Smith, founder of classical liberalism. As Wilson and Reill note, Adam Smiths theory melded nicely with the political stance of the Whig Party. The modern Conservative Party was created out of the Pittite Tories of the early 19th century, in the late 1820s disputes over political reform broke up this grouping. A government led by the Duke of Wellington collapsed amidst dire election results, following this disaster Robert Peel set about assembling a new coalition of forces. However, a consensus reached on these issues ended party politics in 1816 for a decade, Party politics revived in 1829 with the split of the Democratic-Republican Party into the Jacksonian Democrats led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig Party, led by Henry Clay
5.
Christianity
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Christianity is a Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who serves as the focal point for the religion. It is the worlds largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament. Christian theology is summarized in creeds such as the Apostles Creed and his incarnation, earthly ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection are often referred to as the gospel, meaning good news. The term gospel also refers to accounts of Jesuss life and teaching, four of which—Matthew, Mark, Luke. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion that began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the mid-1st century, following the Age of Discovery, Christianity spread to the Americas, Australasia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the world through missionary work and colonization. Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization, throughout its history, Christianity has weathered schisms and theological disputes that have resulted in many distinct churches and denominations. Worldwide, the three largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the denominations of Protestantism. There are many important differences of interpretation and opinion of the Bible, concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds. They began as baptismal formulae and were expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith. Many evangelical Protestants reject creeds as definitive statements of faith, even agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. The Baptists have been non-creedal in that they have not sought to establish binding authoritative confessions of faith on one another. Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in the Restoration Movement, such as the Christian Church, the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, the Apostles Creed is the most widely accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists and this particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator, each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period. The creed was used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome. Most Christians accept the use of creeds, and subscribe to at least one of the mentioned above. The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God, Christians believe that Jesus, as the Messiah, was anointed by God as savior of humanity, and hold that Jesus coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The Christian concept of the Messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept, Jesus, having become fully human, suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, but did not sin
6.
Zoroastrianism
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Ascribed to the teachings of the Iranian prophet Zoroaster, it exalts a deity of wisdom, Ahura Mazda, as its Supreme Being. Zoroastrianism was suppressed from the 7th century onwards following the Muslim conquest of Persia of 633-654, recent estimates place the current number of Zoroastrians at around 2.6 million, with most living in India and in Iran. Besides the Zoroastrian diaspora, the older Mithraic faith Yazdânism is still practised amongst Kurds, the religious philosophy of Zoroaster divided the early Iranian gods of Proto-Indo-Iranian tradition. The most important texts of the religion are those of the Avesta, in Zoroastrianism, the creator Ahura Mazda, through the Spenta Mainyu is an all-good father of Asha, in opposition to Druj and no evil originates from him. He and his works are evident to humanity through the six primary Amesha Spentas, Spenta Mainyu adjoined unto truth oppose the Spirits opposite, Angra Mainyu and its forces born of Akəm Manah. In Zoroastrianism, the purpose in life is to be among those who renew the world. to make the progress towards perfection. Its basic maxims include, Humata, Hukhta, Huvarshta, which mean, Good Thoughts, Good Words, there is only one path and that is the path of Truth. Do the right thing because it is the thing to do. The full name by which Zoroaster addressed the deity is, Ahura, The Lord Creator and he proclaimed that there is only one God, the singularly creative and sustaining force of the Universe. He also stated that human beings are given a right of choice, Zoroasters teachings focused on responsibility, and did not introduce a devil per se. The contesting force to Ahura Mazda was called Angra Mainyu, or angry spirit, post-Zoroastrian scripture introduced the concept of Ahriman, the Devil, which was effectively a personification of Angra Mainyu. The name Zoroaster is a Greek rendering of the name Zarathustra and he is known as Zartosht and Zardosht in Persian and Zaratosht in Gujarati. The Zoroastrian name of the religion is Mazdayasna, which combines Mazda- with the Avestan language word yasna, meaning worship, in English, an adherent of the faith is commonly called a Zoroastrian or a Zarathustrian. An older expression still used today is Behdin, meaning The best Religion | Beh < Middle Persian Weh + Din < Middle Persian dēn < Avestan Daēnā. In Zoroastrian liturgy the term is used as a title for an individual who has formally inducted into the religion in a Navjote ceremony. The term Mazdaism /ˈmæzdə. ɪzəm/ is a typical 19th century construct, taking Mazda- from the name Ahura Mazda, the March 2001 draft edition of the Oxford English Dictionary also records an alternate form, Mazdeism, perhaps derived from the French Mazdéisme, which first appeared in 1871. In older English sources, the terms Gheber and Gueber were used to refer to Zoroastrians, however, Zoroastrian philosophy is identified as having been known to Italian Renaissance Europe through an image of Zoroaster in Raphaels School of Athens by Giorgio Vasari in 1550. The Oxford English Dictionary records use of the term Zoroastrianism in 1874 in Archibald Sayces Principles of Comparative Philology, Zoroastrians believe that there is one universal, transcendent, supreme god, Ahura Mazda, or the Wise Lord
7.
Stephen Jay Gould
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Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of science of his generation. Gould spent most of his teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996 Gould was also appointed as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, Goulds most significant contribution to evolutionary biology was the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which he developed with Niles Eldredge in 1972. The theory proposes that most evolution is characterized by periods of evolutionary stability. The theory was contrasted against phyletic gradualism, the idea that evolutionary change is marked by a pattern of smooth. Most of Goulds empirical research was based on the land snail genera Poecilozonites and he also contributed to evolutionary developmental biology, and received wide praise for his book Ontogeny and Phylogeny. In evolutionary theory he opposed strict selectionism, sociobiology as applied to humans and he campaigned against creationism and proposed that science and religion should be considered two distinct fields whose authorities do not overlap. Gould was known by the public mainly from his 300 popular essays in the magazine Natural History. In April 2000, the US Library of Congress named him a Living Legend, Stephen Jay Gould was born and raised in the community of Bayside, a neighborhood of the northeastern section of Queens in New York City. His father Leonard was a stenographer and a World War II veteran in the United States Navy. His mother Eleanor was an artist whose parents were Jewish immigrants living and working in the citys Garment District, when Gould was five years old his father took him to the Hall of Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History, where he first encountered Tyrannosaurus rex. I had no idea there were such things—I was awestruck, Gould once recalled and it was in that moment that he decided to become a paleontologist. Raised in a secular Jewish home, Gould did not formally practice religion, when asked directly if he was an agnostic in Skeptic magazine, he responded, If you absolutely forced me to bet on the existence of a conventional anthropomorphic deity, of course Id bet no. But, basically, Huxley was right when he said that agnosticism is the honorable position because we really cannot know. Id be real surprised if there turned out to be a conventional God, though he had been brought up by a Marxist father, he stated that his fathers politics were very different from his own. In describing his own views, he has said they tend to the left of center. According to Gould the most influential political books he read were C. Wright Mills The Power Elite, while attending Antioch College in the early 1960s, Gould was active in the civil rights movement and often campaigned for social justice
8.
Apocalypticism
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This belief is usually accompanied by the idea that civilization will soon come to a tumultuous end due to some sort of catastrophic global event. Apocalypticism is often conjoined with the belief that knowledge that will likely be revealed in a major confrontation between good and evil forces, destined to change the course of history. Apocalypses can be viewed as good, evil, ambiguous or neutral and they can appear as a personal or group tendency, an outlook or a perceptual frame of reference, or merely as expressions in a speakers rhetorical style. Jewish apocalypticism holds a doctrine that there are two eras of history, the present era, which is ruled over by evil, at the time of the coming era, there will be a messiah who will deliver the faithful into the new era. Moses of Crete, a rabbi in the 5th century, claimed to be the messiah and promised to lead the people, like the ancient Moses, through a parted sea back to Palestine. His followers left their possessions and waited for the promised day, some scholars believe that Jesus apocalyptic teachings were the central message Jesus intended to impart, more central even than his messianism. Various Christian eschatological systems have developed, providing different frameworks for understanding the timing, the gospels portray Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, described by himself and by others as the Son of Man – translated as the Son of Humanity – and hailing the restoration of Israel. Jesus himself, as the Son of God, a description used by himself and others for him, was to rule this kingdom as lord of the Twelve Apostles. Albert Schweitzer emphasized that Jesus was a prophet, preparing his fellow Jews for the imminent end of the world. Many historians concur that Jesus was a prophet, most notably Paula Fredriksen, Bart Ehrman. E. P. Sanders portrays Jesus as expecting to assume the position in Gods kingdom, above the Apostles, who would judge the twelve tribes. The preaching of John was, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, other scholars such as Ehrman and Sanders accept that Jesus was simply mistaken, that he believed the end of the world to be imminent. We make sense of these pieces of evidence if we think that Jesus himself told his followers that the Son of Man would come while they still lived, the fact that this expectation was difficult for Christians in the first century helps prove that Jesus held it himself. We also note that Christianity survived this early discovery that Jesus had made a very well. There are a few recorded instances of apocalypticism leading up to the year 1000, however they mostly rely on one source, Rodulfus Glaber. Specifically in Western Europe, during the year 1000, Christian philosophers held many debates on when Jesus was actually born and this caused confusion between the common people on whether or not the apocalypse would occur at a certain time. Because both literate and illiterate people commonly accepted idea of the apocalypse, they could only accept what they heard from religious leaders on when the disastrous event would occur. Religious leader, Abbo II of Metz believed that Jesus was born 21 years after year 1 which was accepted by close circles of his followers
9.
Sect
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A sect is a subgroup of a religious, political, or philosophical belief system, usually an offshoot of a larger group. A sect, in an Indian context, refers to an organized tradition, the present gamut of meanings of sect has been influenced by confusion with the homonymous Latin word secta, as though sects were scissionsWiktionary entry cast aside from the mainstream religion. There are several different sociological definitions and descriptions for the term, among the first to define them were Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch. In the church-sect typology they are described as newly formed groups that form to protest elements of their parent religion. The American sociologists Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge assert that claim to be authentic purged, refurbished version of the faith from which they split. They further assert that sects have, in contrast to churches, other sociologists of religion such as Fred Kniss have asserted that sectarianism is best described with regard to what a sect is in tension with. Some religious groups exist in only with co-religious groups of different ethnicities. The English sociologist Roy Wallis argues that a sect is characterized by “epistemological authoritarianism”, in France, since the 1970s, secte has a specific meaning which is very different from the English word. The term remains valid for this purpose, according to Michaels, Indian sects do not focus on heresy, since the lack of a center or a compulsory center makes this impossible – instead, the focus is on adherents and followers. The ancient schools of fiqh or sharia in Islam are known as madhhabs, in the beginning Islam was classically divided into three major sects. These political divisions are known as Sunni Islam, Shia Islam. Each sect developed several distinct jurisprudence systems reflecting their own understanding of the Islamic law during the course of the history of Islam, for instance, Sunnis are separated into five sub-sects, namely, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii, Hanbali and Ẓāhirī. The Shia, on the hand, first developed Kaysanism. The non-Zaydis are initially called as Rafida Groups and these Rafidis were later divided into two sub-groups known as Imamiyyah and Batiniyyah. The Imami-Shia later brought into existence Jafari jurisprudence, Batiniyya groups, on the other hand, were divided into two sub-groups known as Seveners and Ismāīlīs. Qarmatians who did not follow the Fatimid Caliphate were branched from the Seveners and those groups of Batiniyya who followed the Fatimids are the ancestors of todays Ismāīlīs. Druze was emerged as an offshoot of Ismāʿīlism at the beginning of the 11th Century, ismailism at the end of the 11th Century split into two major branches known as Nizārī Ismāīlī and Musta’li Ismaili. The Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali Sunnis, the Twelver groups, the Ismāīlī groups, the Zaydis, the Ibadis, in addition, new sects like Ahmadiyya movement, Black Muslim movements, Quranists, Salafis, Wahhabis, and Zikris have been emerged independently
