The final book of the NewTestament,known as The Revelation of St. John the Divine, is the most common source for Christians' concept of what will occur in the Messianic Era. A first resurrection will apply only to those particularly unblemished souls of steadfast faith, and they will reign with Christ in comfort and peace for a thousand years.  Then the rest of the dead will be resurrected, and Satan will be unleashed again to
ravage the nations with wars and temptations to the end that the saints will be surrounded by all this evil.  At that point, the devil and all whom he deceived will be "cast into a lake of fire and brimstone," where they will be tormented forever and ever (Chapter XX:10). This, it says, is the "second death."

      One of the most graphic depictions of what this "hell" will be like is in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce, an Irish Catholic educated by Jesuits, devotes pages to their detailed descriptions of "the agony of the damned." They took the same delight in elaborating on the nature of eternal suffering as their Protestant counterparts. In a collection of his sermons, Charles Grandison Finney - widely regarded as the father of American revivalism--even has the saved looking down from their blissful paradise upon the less fortunate writhing in unspeakable pain, apparently with no feeling whatsoever except relief at being where they are. As Mark Twain said, "Heaven for climate and hell for society."

      While the Tanach, as the Jewish Bible is called, does not deal with an afterlife (in some instances even rejects one), the Oral Tradition is awash with references to it, including belief in reincarnation - one still very evident in the New Testament.  Physical resurrection of the dead, a concept gleaned from Ezekiel: XXXVII,  is one of the Thirteen Articles of Faith enunciated by the Jewish philosopher and codifier Maimonides, familiarly known as the Rambam.  Those who do not subscribe to these are regarded by some Jews as being apostates and therefore not even Jewish, since "rejection of any of [the articles] is not only a rejection of a single tenet of Judaism, but a rejection of the entire structure of Jewish thought."  

      It might surprise Christians to know that Muslims also anticipate a Day of Resurrection along with the return of Jesus to Earth.  Both are matters of faith contained in the Koran.

      So embedded in Jewish tradition is this notion of an afterlife in the flesh that it affects burial customs. At a Beginners' Minion class at an Orthodox synagogue in Pittsburgh, I listened in amazement as an elderly gentleman vented his spleen about something that had happened to him the previous week. Looking ahead to the inevitable, he had gone to purchase a burial plot in a local Jewish cemetery and picked out a place to his liking under a tree with a pleasing vista of distant hills. To his surprise, he was told he couldn't be laid to rest there, since it would upset the prescribed arrangement of boy-boy/girl-girl. In short, his remains could not be interred next to a woman not his wife. No telling  what hanky-panky might ensue among the risen if this precaution were not taken! (That's the inference, at least.)

      It might also surprise Christian Fundamentalists to learn that Chassidic Jews influenced in large part by the Talmud  hold some views very similar to theirs regarding the advent of the Messianic Era. It is highly likely that the author of Revelations was also a product of the same Talmudic background, reflected in the Pharisees of the Gospels (Paul - the real architect of Christianity--confirms in The Acts of the Apostles XV:6 that he and his father before him were both Pharisees).  For example, the New Jerusalem of Revelations is built with precious stones: jasper, sapphire, calcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolyte, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, and amethyst. The Avkas Rochel of the Talmud has it constructed of rubies, topaz, emerald, aquamarine, onyx, jasper, turquoise, sapphire, diamond, and gold.
The Talmudists even have the same concept of two separate resurrections, the first to rise being those buried in the graves of Machpelah followed by all the dead who are in the land of Israel.  In order to include everyone in the Diaspora , certain adjustments must be made.  According the Rabbi Elazar in the name of Rabbi Simon, God will make furrows [tunnels] in the earth, and [bodies]will roll until they reach the Land of Israel. [Then] God will
place the spirit of life within them, and they will stand.  

      Since Israel is a small place, it is held that Jerusalem will expand to cover the entire country, and Israel in turn will expand to cover the whole earth.   The second resurrection will come at the end of the Messianic Era, at which time all the dead Gentiles will rise in order to witness the bliss of the Jews before going to their own "reward" (shades of the Rev. Finney).

      There is disagreement as to how long the Messianic Era will last. The sources researched variously cite one thousand, thirteen hundred, and two thousand years.  Whatever the duration, the general consensus is that this will be a time of great joy and celebration during which Jews will drink wine, study Torah, fly through the air like eagles, and feast on the Leviathan  and the Behemoth.   God will make everyone ten cubits tall (roughly 16 feet),  and every Jewish woman will give birth every day, "being even more fertile than hens."  Now there's a prospect to curdle your blood. That's every day for a thousand (to two thousand) years. What this Malthusian nightmare actually translates into is a randy bunch of old men sitting around dreaming up all this nonsense, rather like their Arab brethren with a bevy of young virgins (who won't remain virgins long) peopling the Islamic Paradise.

      Christians went to the other extreme, of course, a fact Mark Twain's Satan marvels at in Letters From the Earth. There are no sexual shenanigans in the Christian afterlife, since Jesus flatly says in St. Matthew XXII:30 that "in the resurrection they [men and women] neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." St. Paul even goes to far as to advocate celibacy in this world but grudgingly condones marriage only as an alternative to burning (with lust).  

      Talmudists predict that during the Messianic Era, Gentiles who have persecuted Jews will "go to the earth and never return," but those who didn't will serve them as "plowmen and vinedressers" until the time of the final judgment.   What will happen then? The Sages disagree, as they do on everything else, but the bleakest outlook is expressed in The Days of Moshiach: The Redemption and the Coming of Machiach in Jewish Sources by Menachem M. Brod.  He cites Talmudic authority for the belief that Hashem (God) will destroy all the descendants of Sheis (Seth, third son of Adam and Eve) - meaning, by this particular interpretation, all the Gentiles.

      This statement becomes a bit problematic, since - if you're brave enough to wade through the "begats" of Genesis Chapter V - you find that all mankind, Hebrews included, descended from Seth through Noah, who, with his immediate family, alone survived The Flood.  It was at that juncture, according to Scripture, that the genetic tree split off with his son Shem into a branch that would later produce Abraham, the father of the Jewish people (and, of course, some of the other Semites as well ).  

      In keeping with an understanding of Seth's being the progenitor of the entire human race, another version of things to come has it that every nation will pass through fire and be burned.  In view of the implications, it is modified to reflect Brod's vision of things, since it includes the prediction that only Jews will be forgiven and saved from this conflagration.

      The Christian prospect of Judgment Day is scant improvement over the Jewish.  It just has a different set of survivors. Only one thing emerges as an absolute certainty from all this fantastic speculation: somebody's going to be in for a rather big surprise, not least of which are  those youngsters playing the controversial video game called  "Left Behind: Eternal Forces," which has Christians killing all those followers of the Antichrist (with a suggestively Arab name) whom they are unable to convert.  The thinking behind this commercial monstrosity seems to be that if our current leaders don't manage to effect a genuine Armageddon in the Middle East, we'll promote enthusiasm for that bloody battle among our children by having them experience it in fantasy so they'll be inspired to try harder to bring it about in their lifetime.  

      I used to have an uncle - very dear to me--who lived vibrantly into his nineties.  Since he had no religious affiliation, some who feared for the fate of his immortal soul beat a steady path to the door in his last years to urge salvation upon him.  His stock answer to their importunity was this gem: "If there's a just God, I don't have anything to worry about.  If there isn't, it wouldn't do any good to worry."  There's nothing of value that can be added to that, except perhaps to say that there is no mere belief system under the sun worth killing for - or dying for.