eschatology (from Gk. ἔσχατος, ‘last’, and λόγος, ‘discourse’),
the doctrine of the last things, that is the ultimate destiny both of the individual soul and the whole created order. The term first appears in English in the 19th cent., but the topic forms the subject of the final section of the creeds and systematic theologies. When the end of the world did not come as expected in the early Church, it became peripheral to most Christian theology, but the imminent expectation of it erupted from time to time in sectarian circles (... ...
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