Is There a Hope For The Dead?

apocalypticism. 2015. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 30 December, 2015, from http://www.britannica.com/topic/apocalypticism

I see this is a quote but what is your personal view?

My personal view comes from having grown up at the end of the Cold War. And I developed an interest in Russian history somewhere along the way. Russian culture has a strong apocalyptic streak to it. Both of those experiences led me to look deeper into apocalypcism.

Bernard McGinn is a religion scholar who edited a collection of essays about it. There's a view that it's a feature of Indo-European culture. It's interesting to compare different versions of it. Vikings, Persians, Muslims, etc.

Sometimes apocalypticism changes from just being a background feature of the culture to an expectation that the end is right around the corner. It's happened over and over. The passage you quoted is an example of it. I wonder if that sort of thing is a kind of stress response. Who knows?

That's a very interesting point. Because for a fact the human family is under a great deal of stress. Sadly, as I'm sure you have witnessed, much of it is due to our own fault. It is only here recently that some have begun to sound the alarm. But is it to late?

I firmly believe there's a hope for the dead.

It's not recent. People were doing it 2000 years ago. The quote you provided in the OP shows that.

I have lately been reading of the dead being used to fertilize trees.