Plenty of Bible stories can teach valuable lessons, but some of its prophecies are downright twisted, even by modern standards. Here are a few examples of the Bible's more chilling predictions, doomsday included.
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00:00Plenty of Bible stories can teach valuable lessons, but some of its prophecies are downright
00:04twisted, even by modern standards. Here are a few examples of the Bible's more chilling
00:09predictions, doomsday included.
00:12The biblical prophet Ezekiel has a somewhat complicated reputation. There's a respect
00:16that comes with being granted visions from God, but then there's the issue of the form
00:20these visions took. Just take his first vision. As told in Ezekiel 1, he looked up to the
00:25sky and found something akin to a chariot parting the clouds. And pulling that chariot,
00:30four figures, each with four faces and four wings and calves' feet. But that's not all.
00:35They had human hands under their wings. But the faces, well…
00:39Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side, each had the face of
00:43a lion, and on the left, the face of an ox. Each also had the face of an eagle.
00:48What is that thing?
00:50Then there are the chariot's wheels, each of which is described as, quote, a wheel intersecting
00:54a wheel, with the wheel's rims full of eyes all around. Picture it if you can.
01:00That said, the actual prophecy attributed to this vision is more positive than you might
01:03expect from the descriptions. Ezekiel was one of a number of Jewish exiles at the time,
01:08and his vision showed that God hadn't abandoned him.
01:12Ezekiel's prophecies were all, generally speaking, a bit strange. Consider his prophecy from
01:16Ezekiel 5. That specific part of the Bible usually gets mentioned because God told Ezekiel
01:21to shave off his hair and beard, then divide it into even thirds. One part was scattered
01:25to the wind, another was burned, and the third was to be hit with a sword.
01:31That part's weird.
01:33Those tasks were meant to illustrate God's displeasure with the people of Jerusalem at
01:37the time. Ezekiel shaving his head symbolized God rejecting Jerusalem for its sinful ways,
01:42and the destruction of the hair was meant to indicate the punishment his people would
01:45have to endure going forward.
01:47And Ezekiel got specific about what travails were ahead, writing,
01:50"...therefore in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their
01:54parents."
01:55In other words, Ezekiel predicted that the coming famine would drive people to cannibalism,
02:00all as a result of divine punishment.
02:03If you're looking for some of the darkest and most violent visions in the Bible, then
02:06head straight to the End Times prophecies. Or, to be even more specific, the prophecies
02:10regarding what happens after the End Times, as well as the punishments that will supposedly
02:15be doled out.
02:16"...say your prayers. End Times are here."
02:19For non-believers, there's a bit of a waiting period between the end of the world and judgment
02:23— a thousand years, according to Revelation 20, during which Jesus would rule with other
02:27believers. After that, non-believers would be resurrected to stand trial before a judge
02:32seated on a great white throne. But, spoiler alert, the only fate awaiting them is a second,
02:38final death. Oh, and that death would be met by being thrown into the lake of fire.
02:43"...what's going on?"
02:45"...Burn in hell! It says burn in hell!"
02:47What's more, it doesn't really matter what a person was like in life. If they didn't
02:50believe in God, then they're consigned to burn for eternity alongside the devil. Sure,
02:54there's some support for the idea that there's a range of severity to the punishments dished
02:58out in the lake of fire, but a living death spent on fire promises to be unpleasant regardless
03:04of the details.
03:05"...We're done!"
03:06"...Okay."
03:07"...You're done! Don't appear any more foolish."
03:09If you read Matthew 24, you'll find a prophecy that covers both a pretty grim past and an
03:14equally grim future. Generally speaking, this prophecy is given by Jesus Christ himself
03:18as he talks to some of his followers, all of whom are desperate to know when he'll return
03:22and how they'll know it. But Jesus only leaves them with unsolved mysteries, nothing near
03:27a clear answer.
03:28"...I don't get it."
03:29"...I don't get it either."
03:30He does, however, give them some dark, cryptic signs. As he walks around the temple buildings,
03:34he says,
03:35"...Truly, I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another. Every one will be
03:39thrown down."
03:41Many presume this refers to the real-life destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. After
03:45that, though, he continues by saying,
03:46"...You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom
03:51against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places."
03:54Violence, strife, and persecution — not exactly the brightest future for humanity.
04:00And the part that's perhaps most disturbing? Unlike the destruction of the temple, which
04:04has been ascribed to a specific event, the same can't be said of those wars and natural
04:09disasters. This prophecy seems to predict strings of dire events to come without an
04:13end in sight.
04:14And just to top it all off, this prophecy ends with an uh-oh statement. All these are
04:18the beginning of birth pains.
04:21In the Book of Exodus, you can find the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, a horrific prophecy
04:25that came about due to the religious tensions that existed around the time it was written.
04:29You know the basic story. The Israelites were being oppressed by the pharaoh of ancient
04:32Egypt, forbidden from practicing their religion. God didn't approve of the situation, and as
04:37such, he appeared to Moses to deliver a combination of prophecies and instructions.
04:42These involved cursing Egypt with more and more plagues each time the pharaoh refused
04:45to agree to their terms. There were ten plagues in total — blood, gnats, flies, livestock,
04:51boils, hail, locusts, darkness, firstborns, and let's not forget frogs.
04:57What the hell?
04:58Whoa, dude, it's raining frogs.
05:01Even the most straightforward of the plagues were supremely unpleasant. Masses of frogs
05:05invading people's homes or locusts so completely covering the ground that they turn it black
05:10aren't the prettiest images, nor is the thought of the people of Egypt covered in awful boils.
05:15But then there are the ones that are truly disturbing, like the water in the Nile turning
05:18to blood, killing wildlife as the smell of death fills the air, or the entire country
05:23being somehow covered in supernatural darkness for three days.
05:26Then, of course, there's the bone-chilling description of what happens to each firstborn
05:30child. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt, worse than there has ever been or ever
05:35will be again.
05:37Now, to be clear, the Bible doesn't predict that one day human beings are going to tap
05:41into some sort of weird fantastical magic and become necromancers raising zombies to
05:45do their bidding. But that's not to say that necromancy and resurrection don't appear in
05:49passages related to biblical prophecies.
05:52In Ezekiel 37, the prophet gets a visit from God, who takes him to a valley filled with
05:59dried human skeletons. It doesn't take long for God to ask whether those bodies can be
06:03brought back to life. Ezekiel had no idea, but God told him to make a prophecy to those
06:08old bones that he, God, would be able to breathe life back into them.
06:12Upon speaking the words as he was told, Ezekiel watched as flesh and tendons spontaneously
06:17grew and knitted together. The corpses stood up and quite literally formed an undead army.
06:22If nothing else, it's definitely a little strange to imagine a biblical prophet raising
06:26an army of zombies.
06:28But despite the creepy necromancy, analyses of this verse explain that this was actually
06:32a message of hope. During Ezekiel's time, many exiles despaired of their perceived distance
06:37from God. Though it's one of the most disturbing parts of the Bible, this prophecy was likely
06:41meant to tell them that God was still nearby and, not only that, there was a better life
06:45to come.
06:47If you want to get technical, then the events of Genesis 22 arguably end in a very positive
06:52prophecy. God tells Abraham,
06:54"...I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the
06:57sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities
07:01of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed."
07:06This is all your land?
07:08For all of eternity.
07:09Yeah, but apparently God forgot to tell anyone else. We're at war with someone like every
07:12other day.
07:13Sounds great, right? Well, yes, but if you back things up, the mood gets considerably
07:19murkier.
07:20Here's the full context. God decided that it was time to test Abraham's fate, and he
07:24did so by commanding that Abraham sacrifice his only son, Isaac. And Abraham voices no
07:29qualms about either the concept of human sacrifice or the fact that it's his own son who's being
07:33killed. He takes Isaac and a few servants with him to a mountain, proceeds to lie to
07:38all of them about his true intentions, and gets as far as tying Isaac to the altar as
07:42he holds a knife in his hand.
07:44Have you lost your mind?
07:45God does eventually interrupt, providing a lamb for slaughter before Abraham can actually
07:49kill his son, and explains the whole thing was just a test, when Abraham passed with
07:53flying colors. Isaac wasn't hurt in the end, but it's certainly a bit twisted that the
07:58first Hebrew patriarch was so willing to perform a human sacrifice, isn't it?
08:02It's not uncommon to reference, or hear someone else reference, the wrath of God in something
08:06of a jokey context.
08:08He's Old Testament. Blood, bullets, wrath of God. That's his style.
08:14But if you go through the Bible, it becomes clear that this isn't necessarily a laughing
08:17matter. The levels of violence and slaughter that God condones are pretty extreme. Take
08:22Jeremiah 25. The relationship between Jerusalem and God was pretty rocky on account of the
08:27people deciding to ignore God's commands. He understandably got fed up, leading to a
08:31prophecy that spoke of wrath and ruin. The verse goes like this,
08:35"...I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn, and an
08:39everlasting ruin. This whole country will become a desolate wasteland."
08:43To get specific, a divine cup of wine would make the people go mad, just as a prelude
08:47to the slaughter that would span many different nations. No one would be able to escape, pastors
08:52and farmlands would be razed and burned, and peace would be little more than a distant
08:56memory.
08:57But the single most disturbing image in this prophecy? The heaps of corpses left behind
09:01in the aftermath. The Bible reads,
09:03"...at that time, those slain by the Lord will be everywhere, from one end of the earth
09:07to the other. They will not be mourned or gathered up or buried, but will be like dung
09:11lying on the ground."
09:14Plenty of people have imagined what the end of the world would look like, but the version
09:17presented in the book of Revelation is particularly harrowing.
09:20"...there are dragons, there are great wars, there are prostitutes."
09:25Taking it from the top, in Revelation 6, the prophet John was given a scroll with seven
09:30seals. The first four released the fabled four horsemen of the apocalypse, representing
09:34conquest, war, famine, and death, all of whom were free to wreak havoc as they saw fit.
09:39As the next two seals were opened, John witnessed slaughter and a wide array of natural disasters.
09:44For example, the moon turned red, the stars fell, and islands were uprooted. The seventh
09:49seal releases seven angels, each of whom was given their own trumpet, and, as told
09:53in Revelation 8, each of those trumpets heralded its own disasters.
09:57Bloody hail and fire rang down, scorching the earth. The oceans turned to blood. Stars
10:02fell from the sky. The sun and moon splintered, leaving the world in darkness. Well, pretty
10:07dire. Then the seventh trumpet led to voices from heaven screaming down amidst great storms.
10:12And that's not even the end. Revelation 16 introduced the seven bowls of God's wrath.
10:17All of them poured over the earth by the angels, each with devastating effect. Painful sores
10:22appeared on people's skin, and they spontaneously combusted in the sun's fire. Water turned
10:27to blood, 100-pound hailstones fell from the sky, and earthquakes split the ground. Suffering
10:32and death all around, in other words. No happy ending.