I am struck by the fact that so many religions and so many cultures exhibit the same message of hope: that, at some indeterminate point in the future – typically when we are most in need of rescue or salvation – God or his representative or some heroic figure from history will return to save us from great danger or great evil.<\/p>\n
In Christian theology, there is the notion of the Second Coming<\/a> of Jesus Christ with some sects convinced that this occurrence is both predictable and imminent. In the Shia branch of Islam, there is the notion of the Major Occultation<\/a> of the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi. Both Christians and Muslims are still waiting.<\/p>\n I visit the Czech Republic quite often and have some familiarity with its history. The Czechs have a succession of legends, many of which – such as, King Barley, Prince Bruncvik, Saint Wencelas and the Knights of Blanik – conclude with the promise of the hero returning to save the Czechs at the hour of their greatest need which has apparently not yet occurred in spite of successive foreign occupations and totalitarian regimes.<\/p>\n Do you know of other religious traditions or cultural tales that involve the return of a saviour and why do we need and continue to believe in such child-like messages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am struck by the fact that so many religions and so many cultures exhibit the same message of hope: that, at some indeterminate point in the future – typically when we are most in need of rescue or salvation – God or his representative or some heroic figure from history will return to save […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5771,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/5771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}