Apocalypse (Full Episode) | The Story of God with Morgan Freeman

[Music] every morning starts the same coffee and crossword [Music] religious conflicts [Music] it all seems so apocalyptic none of this is new however we've been predicting the end of the world for thousands of years from nostradamus all the way back to the book of revelation something about the drama of annihilation seems to grip us is it just human nature to worry and wonder about the end of days or is it really coming i'm setting off on a journey to find out why so many religions predict an apocalypse this beast has a human name its number is 666. to discover the roots of judgment day the sons of light shall battle the sons of darkness our ancient prophecies there's no peace between us and our neighbors reverberate today if these guys ever came to power it would be hell on earth and to ask whether the end is really what we imagine or if it's all just in our minds [Music] my first destination is jerusalem the spiritual set of the jews christians and muslims all three of those faiths predict jerusalem will play a role in the end of the world it has long been a flash point for religious tension i've come here to meet yurum hasani an expert in the politics and theology of judaism i want to know why the end of days is so closely tied to this city you're looking at the absolute epicenter of the monotheistic world right over there that's the dome of the rock which according to islamic tradition muhammad ascended to heaven from right that spot and over there the mount of olives and gethsemane below where jesus and his disciples used to meet and of course down here is the the western wall plaza the holiest shrine prayer location for all of the jewish people in judaism this whole area is called the temple mount this is the temple mount the temple was a building seven stories high stood on top of this temple mount on top of that flat area where those trees are in 20 bc king herod the great built a temple where jews could worship their god it was designed to last forever herod says we're going to create the most spectacular physical structure in the entire middle east maybe the entire world you can see these gigantic stones at the bottom those are called herodian stones the jewish temple to the one god stood on top of that mount before there was islam or christianity but in the year 70 a.d the romans sacked jerusalem and demolished the temple in the centuries since jews have come to pray at its remains the western or wailing wall it was almost 1900 years before the site returned to direct jewish control in 1967 we are about 70 years into the new israel bias the temple have been rebuilt two reasons one is because the jews aren't ready and the other is because the muslims aren't ready the state of israel militarily politically controls this whole area but the state of israel gave the temple mount area on the top to the muslims while the top of the mount is off limits to jewish religious rights there are sacred spaces underground chris joram says will help me understand the jewish vision for end times this is it we've come to the closest that a human being can come to the holy of holies the most sacred spot in the world that's the room in the temple that one human being would enter once a year the high priest on yom kippur on the holiest day of the year and he would say god's name orthodox jews believe that without this temple their religious rights are incomplete so they await the day when their temple is rebuilt is there a messiah in judaism and judaism jews invented the messiah but it's not the same messiah that most people think about okay because when christians think of the messiah they think of someone who's divine yeah they think of you know the end of days what we have for the messiah is a man a king of this earth who's going to bring peace among the nations in this world and he will not be divine it will not be divine and euron tells me this mortal messiah has a very specific to-do list according to jewish tradition he has three things he's supposed to do number one he's going to reconstitute the jewish kingdom for the jewish state number two he's going to bring peace with the neighbors and number three he's going to rebuild that until the temple here we are this is 2015 what are you going to do now what is contemporary jewish position on the temple the jews think of the world in terms of this dream that once existed in the world that was taken away they just want to bring back into the world that is the reconstruction of the temple the reconstruction of the temple as the the crowning symbol of this era of justice and peace that we're supposed to be assisting to bring back into the world judaism is just one of many religions that envisions to come into world peace one day but looking at this place where so many religions intersect it's hard to imagine peace coming rebuilding the temple now would almost certainly not herald an age of peace it would obliterate some of the holiest sites in islam in fact it might even trigger an apocalyptic battle but the idea of a violent end of the world is not new two thousand years ago not all jews anticipated a coming age of peace one jewish sect fervently anticipated a bloody apocalypse archaeologist jody magnus has taken me to the shores of the dead sea where their ancient prophecies were miraculously preserved welcome to qumran right right this is where the scrolls were found right that's right the dead sea scrolls were found in 11 caves in the cliffs surrounding qumran how did they get up there well they were deposited in the caves by the people who lived at qumran who were members of a jewish sect called the essenes so why why come here they came out here to the desert because they wanted to live in isolation apart from everyone else jody tells me that the essenes settled here at qumran around 100 bc they believed an epic battle was coming one that would bring on the end of the world thanks to the incredibly dry climate here their apocalyptic writings have been preserved for more than 2 000 years looking over the edge of the cliff here look at what we see below us holy cow this cave is very important approximately 700 different scrolls were found in this cave including fragments of the war squad the war scrolls what now what is that that's this role that describes a 40-year long apocalyptic war and one of the famous lines from the scroll says there shall be a war of terrible carnage the sons of light shall battle the sons of darkness and it shall end in eternal redemption this war that they're talking about is that like a call to revolution or is it more like a mythological expectation when you read the war scroll one of the interesting things is that it interweaves real and then what seems to us to be fantasy the people who are leading them into battle are priests who are dressed in priestly outfits the fact that they talk about angels fighting in their midst but the soldiers are equipped in the way that soldiers at that time were equipped so you have a combination of what seems to be very real um combined with things that to us seem to be imaginary like many doomsday cults the essenes believed the end was imminent and took precautions to be ready to meet god at any moment this is one of the ritual baths here at qumran they literally believed that god's presence dwelled in their midst according to biblical jewish law if you enter the presence of the god of israel you have to be in a state of ritual purity so all of these pools were filled by the flash flood waters but water was not replenished over the course of the year so it got pretty gross uh nevertheless it was still considered pure for the purposes of ritual immersion you could probably come close to walking on it yeah you could probably cut it with a knife at that point so they were all here preparing themselves for the apocalypse that's right what happened well the apocalypse sort of did arrive but not the kind of apocalypse that they anticipated in 68 a.d their battle with the sons of darkness took place it was the romans as part of their campaign to crush a jewish revolt against their rule they wiped homerun and the essenes off the map so the romans uh arm is just was sweeping past here and all these people are in the way just get rid of them that's exactly right the romans were basically subduing the entire area but the idea of an apocalyptic battle with the forces of darkness did not die with the essenes it crept into another faith one that was just being born all roads lead to rome that's where i want to uncover how the christian idea of the end of days began its most famous book of prophecy revelation written around 100 a.d foretells an impending battle with the antichrist let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast or it is the number of a person its number is six 666. i want to know if i can calculate the number of the beast [Music] i've come to the biblioteca casa natenzi near the vatican to meet an expert in early christianity kim haines eisen she tells me she has compelling evidence that reveals the identity of the beast [Music] good morning so what exactly do we have here well i've been looking at some fragments of the book of revelation the book of revelation that's right the book of the end of days the end of days the apocalypse it's a prophetic book it's got loads of symbolism but it's also very much a political book and making a political claim about the cause of evil the cause of evil or who's responsible for evil so tell me about this coding because as i understand it the antichrist was given a code so they would never call his name they would just say it by code well there has been a lot of debate about what this number in particular 666 who it refers to there has also been a strong argument made for 666 referring to nero nero was emperor of rome from 54 to 68 a.d around the time when the first christians began to arrive in rome so how do you make six six six translate to nero when you apply numerical values to the name kaiser neuron and you add up those numbers you come to 666. in ancient greek and hebrew every letter had a corresponding number if you add up the letters of the name for emperor nero written in hebrew kaiserniron the total comes to six six six but nero is just one of many names that can add up to 666. kim believes a later copy of the book of revelation found in an archaeological dig in egypt confirms the beast is nero one of the interesting things about these fragments is that we've got two different numbers what are those letters a key is a 600 xc 60 sigma a6 666 this one over here we have a yoda sigma 616 with a line over the top why is it you might think that this number destroys the possibility that it could be nero yes what's striking about this is that it may help to confirm the identity of nero because this would be the number that we would get if we spelled nero according to the latin spelling nero kaiser without the n the letter n represented 50 the number 50. so 666 minus 50 616. so we've just just subtract and we're going to come up with six one six and we have the same guy that's right i'm so clever [Music] but why might early christians have called nero the antichrist kim brings me to the very heart of the vatican saint peter's square to show me the answer so we know that the code 666 refers to the emperor nero why emperor nero was despised for many things including persecuting christians now in the square here you can see an obelisk that he arranged to stand at the turning point in his circus circus maximus uh the circus neuroneus erroneous yeah the circus stood here and was a place for chariot races games but he also used it then for persecuting christians so in 64 there was a major fire in rome and much of the city was destroyed nero wound up blaming christians and he executed them in great numbers as far as we can tell right here in this circus tradition says nero even executed the man many considered to be the founder of the church in rome peter the story about peter was that he was crucified upside down some of them were lit on fire burning to light the place it explains why they despised him so much so now we have the basilica of saint peter standing here commemorating his death so the irony this is where peter founded the church yeah it's pretty dramatic the crucifix on which peter died could have been just yards from where i stand now obviously the christians hated nero he was the antichrist even after his suicide they appeared that he had the power to come back and rule which was why i was safer to refer to him in a secret code but the christians living under the conditions that they were living judgment day couldn't come too soon the christian idea of apocalypse took hold under the oppression of rome this evil empire had destroyed jerusalem and persecuted the early followers of jesus but the idea has since spread to a different faith it targets a different evil emblem threatens to engulf us all in the apocalypse [Music] i'm traveling the world to find out why billions of people believe in the end of days my journey has brought me to islam islam is an arabic word that means surrender submission to god's will same god the jews and christians worship meeting muslims face to face i've learned that islam aims for people to live in peace but watching the news today you'd be forgiven for not knowing that a tiny percentage of muslims are waging war against the west isis and other religious extremist groups believe the apocalypse has already begun to understand why i've come to new york to meet a man who was once a high-level recruiter for an apocalyptic islamist group was radicalized as a teenager in the uk please tell me about that radicalization i think it's important just to distinguish between islamism and islam a religion what i mean by islamism is the desire to impose any version of islam over society that ideology was sold to me as if it was the religion of islam and that's when i adopted i grew up facing a very very severe form of violent racism domestically within the uk i'm talking hammer attacks machete attacks by neo-nazi skinheads bugs on many occasions i had to to watch as my friends were stabbed before my eyes as a 15 year old i began seeing myself as separate from the rest of society and an islamist recruiter found me in that state as a young angry teenager and it was very easy for that recruiter i joined a group called hezbollah and that's the uh the group i spent 13 years on the leadership on [Music] is that the precaution true al-qaeda yes it's the first islamist organization that was responsible for popularizing the notion of resurrecting a modern day theocratic caliphate as we now see that isis has laid claim to but my former group they were the first ones to popularize that term i've ended up in egypt where i continue to recruit people to this cause i was eventually arrested on the 1st of march 2002 i was taken to the headquarters of the state security in cairo down underground in their torture dungeons i was blindfolded and that's where the worst ordeal began they began electrocuting everyone you served four years fourth person and then you came out not so radical i am still a muslim but i'm now liberal now when i was in prison and i was living with the the who's who of the of the jihadist terrorist movements and islamist movements we have a leader of the muslim brotherhood i saw and i thought my god if these guys ever came to power and declared a caliphate it would be hell on earth of course when isis eventually did declare the caliphate that utopian dream that we all used to share has become that dystopic nightmare that we see now so let's talk a little bit about isis and the apocalyptic prophecies of muhammad and how they are using that for their purposes yeah so there are a lot of prophecies that most muslims share in common with each other the difference is what isis has done is it's manipulated those prophecies to serve its own political and ideological end so there's an example of this uh end of times battle that isis believes is going to take place in a small village called in syria now this village has absolutely no strategic value militarily whatsoever has hardly any economic strategic value either but isis has never the less committed resources to conquering this small village called david they believe that the international community in the coalition must somehow be driven to come and meet them in davich and engage in a final battle would that be part of the apocalypse that america would fall yeah now this prophecy of the prophet muhammad that says that constantinople will fall first and then rome will fall so isis has uh interpreted this piece of scripture that because constantinople has already fallen to muslims that the next big battle will be against the west and the west will eventually fall the idea would be that actually in fact that america today represents rome you know a continuation of western civilization as represented by the roman empire why do you think the idea of the apocalypse is so appealing particularly to so many young people when you feel powerless when you feel that you don't actually control your own destiny when you feel that you have absolutely no voice then it's incredibly tempting though wrong to feel like you're becoming an agent of destiny to suddenly feel like you do have a voice that you are shaping history magent now runs the quillian foundation whose goal is to prevent isis and groups like them from recruiting people in the west he produces counter propaganda videos like this and i hope they're treating you like the hero so we've taken real examples of people who've become disillusioned and we put them to actors voices and actually put out some of those stories thank you thank you both informative and i'm glad you're here thank you it's a pleasure it's probably natural that the apocalypse is appealing to the disenfranchised they have the most to gain and the least to fear from overturning the status quo but it's more widespread than that culturally we seem to have um morbid attraction to the apocalypse it's almost as if we draw some comfort from it at the university of illinois at chicago psychology professor stuart shankman is studying our subconscious belief in the apocalypse he thinks it may be hardwired into our brains so the gist of what we're doing today is we're looking at people's different response to different kinds of threats since this is a lab experiment that relies on volunteers the catastrophe is survivable a certain noise combined with a mild shock to the wrist a skull cap of electrodes and sensors on the subject's face captured the raw data of fear her brain activity and her stress levels together they measured the size of the starter response the first condition is called shock at any time and during that you might receive it when the countdown reaches one you might receive it in the middle of the countdowns you might receive it in between your countdowns you might not receive it at all oh there's a big startle for the unpredictable condition when people are in the unpredictable condition they don't know when this bad thing is coming they're going to show a greater activity in their brain and pupil dilation their heart rate is going to increase now stuart changes to a different condition a predictable shock it's called shock at one and you will get a shock at the end of the countdown your reaction to this painful but foreseeable shock is different surprisingly so when people are in the unpredictable condition their startle response is much higher than when they're in the predictable condition knowing when the bad thing is going to come creates a qualitatively different emotional experience than not knowing so whatever we can do to try to make something that's unpredictable predictable that's going to give us a little bit of solace this mental mechanism could explain why so many of us believe in an impending apocalypse but it may also explain the morbid appeal of doomsday costs i'll tell you about a kingdom level beyond here and if you want to go there then you have to follow me this is the end of the age but is it possible to predict the end a few years back many people thought they had according to popular legend the ancient maya thought the apocalypse would arrive on a specific date december 21st 2012 i want to know if this is really true so i've traveled to their ancient capital tikal in guatemala i'm meeting stanley gunter who's a world leading decoder of mayan inscriptions so this is the temple of the masks and on the other side the temple of the giant jaguar this would have been the very center of the ancient city of tikal and what about those headstone looking things there those are what we call stelite stila c-neck and they commemorate periods in the maya calendar so we see that they would have been dedicated to periods of time such as every 20 years every 10 years and especially every about 400 years the ending of the great baktun cycles the festival to mark the end of a baktun cycle would have culminated in the king sacrificing the captive does that go to say that the mayans felt that 2012 would be the end of time the apocalypse so we heard a few years ago about 2012 when people said the end of the 13th bachmann was going to be the end of the world predicted by the maya and there's a monument down here i think we should take a look at that would help explain that this is stella ten you can see we've got a king there's his head big headdress full of feathers his shoulders all of his jewelry down to his feet if you look down below we can actually see we have a captain we can see his head we have his hands and even down to his legs he's all tied up for sacrifice so now what does this have to do with the apocalypse well we have to go around the other side here okay we have a date that gives us a specific point in time we have 11 years of 360 days then we have three cottons that's about 20 years each so we've got another 60 and then here we have nine boktins because this is a date of about 525 a.d so if you remember we had 13 baktuns ended in 2012. but the really interesting thing is this monument doesn't stop there it goes on and tells us there were 19 of the higher unit the peak tune and even higher we have 11 of the next unit and so on each one of those units is 20 times larger than the previous so what we see on this monument then is that 13 bacteriums wasn't the end of any calendar it was simply the end of one cycle within a whole series of nested cycles each one larger than the other just as we mark the start of a new millennium the maya marked december 21st 2012 as a major event on their calendar the ending of another 400 year cycle that would have been parades music and sacrifice if the ancient maya was still here they'd have had a huge party no apocalypse no apocalypse just a beginning another beginning and another one and another one that would go on for almost eternity we've never found the end for the maya we'll still have to keep searching thinking about the way the maya saw time makes me realize that the idea of an end we have in christianity judaism and islam are not universal for these religions the ultimate hope is that god will intervene in the world of men past judgment and right the wrongs we see around us but there are billions of believers out there who don't see the world that way at all for them time moves in cycles perhaps forever i'm headed to india to understand what the apocalypse could mean in a world without him [Music] india is the birthplace of two great religions hinduism and buddhism [Music] hindus believe an apocalypse comes every few billion years but every end leads to a new beginning and the world starts again buddhists don't imagine a violent end of days to them the word apocalypse does not mean a revelation of god's judgment to the world it's a personal revelation of truth in the mind it's called enlightenment to find out what that means i've come to sarnath india to meet one of the world's most revered buddhist llamas his holiness young kamata [Music] tibetan buddhists believe the kamapa is the 17th reincarnation of a great teacher who lived 900 years ago [Music] good morning i think you should wear this i shouldn't thank you thank you yeah can we walk yeah in 1992 a holy commission headed for the new karmapa and found ogen trinley dorje a seven-year-old son of a nomadic family in eastern tibet are you kind of young for this station yes okay so what what is it like how do you is it all right one way it's meaningful one way is a little bit heavy people have lots of expectation the expectation is heavy for a 30 year old man the karmapa must teach how to find enlightenment while still working to find it for himself this is the sort of decide that the buddhas give first teaching this is the place then where he had his first sermon after he reached enlightenment yes yes right talk to me just a little bit your wholeness about enlightenment how does one even begin to go about trying to attain that wow big question isn't it yes huge challenge yeah maybe i think the first part is maybe you need to recognize yourself like where are you from come from why am i here yeah so i i would like to get some instruction yeah about enlightenment i will try i will try yeah okay okay i'll try it thank you the comma patel's meditation is the key to enlightenment if the apocalypse is the revelation of the true will of god meditation aims to reveal the true will of me they have lots of different ways to meditate but the simple one is to focus focus your breathe that's the one i know you relax your mind and don't follow the path don't anticipate future just relax at the moment just focus your breathing and that's all yeah we should try [Music] it's a lot of work to move past all the memories thoughts emotions to just concentrate on being to see what's left when all the noise is gone [Music] is [Music] okay beautiful good yes thank you can i ask you a philosophical question philosophical i will try it it's about [Music] the westerners idea yeah of apocalypse [Music] the end of time the end of being is that such a thing in buddhism when everything stops and every the world comes to an end and mankind is judged we we believe every day it's somewhere one universe it's it's uh like in the ending one is beginning beginning but it's not like he just kind of judge how to say judge things no judgment day no no judgement day this is a little bit different so actually what you're saying i think is that there is no end only change yeah change one thing ends another begins yeah maybe it's there are not absolute sort of ending yeah thank you thank you thank you when you meet someone like his holiness to come up i guess the thing that stands out most is his humility kamapa doesn't give you the impression that he thinks of himself as greater than you higher than you better in any way than you he's here like the rest of us on this quest trying to understand why we are here seeking to unveil the truth seeking enlightenment but the truth isn't always revealed in a moment of calm reflection 2005 hurricane katrina slammed into louisiana a catastrophe of historic proportions some even thought the end was happening here in new orleans new of orleans that was offensive to god and i believe that the hurricane katrina was in fact punishment against the city of new orleans [Music] katrina was a judgment from god i'm in new orleans to meet katrina's survivors to learn how they dealt with the end and how it changed them so right now we're in flood country yes sir this is where the water actually yes this is actually the ninth ward you were here during katrina is that right yes i was i was in the apartment building that was on the first floor oh and i got eight feet of water and i lost everything i owned did you have a feeling at some point that this was like the end of it all it did seem like the end to me ernest was far from alone new orleans residents charles and angela marsalis came to their local church a shelter in the time of the storm we were in the carrollton avenue church of christ this is you spent a little time here during the storm how did you wind up here we were gonna lodge here for the night and then we were gonna go home the next day and through the night we could uh hear the winds rushing in it's just really really loud i mean at that time it was really scary um i just began to kneel down and pray we could actually you know see the water rising and we thought it stopped it just kept rising the marsalis family was completely cut off more than a hundred billion gallons of water had surged through broken levees three days passed before the red cross evacuated them to a maroon bridge full of desperate survivors it was like pitch black dark everything in that water alligator snakes everything i mean they had sick people and they had women in wheelchairs we saw the guys having drugs over there selling drugs guns yeah i felt that that was at work it was really a dark time it was really dark yeah now this these are dire circumstances and dire circumstances can bring out the best and the worst in people yeah how did you function through that well i'm a minister and you got chairman of the guard sitting here so i told my wife it's time for us to get busy we got to do something and so we just started singing and and then the next day we know in the darkness you could hear people saying sing this song saying that song and how i don't remember how long they were saying all night [Laughter] we just knew that god would get us out of there not even not even katrina could shake that fate i'm god no way [Music] [Applause] [Music] charles and angela did get out in the end a year later they returned to new orleans and rebuilt their lives the experience of getting so close to the end and so close to god drove them to start their own church well how many of y'all here remember katrina y'all member of the stone y'all remember that some folk even said that that's god punishment on new orleans and i had to tell them folk no god allow it to happen you know a lot of people had their eyes on new orleans but they saw something good that could come out of something bad had it not been for the stone we wouldn't be here and this building problem we would we wouldn't have met some of these people that you seen in here today i believe everyone with that stone you know john that's very buddhist yeah yeah the buddhists say every ending is the beginning it's god's will god saw this before we saw this we just can't allow ourselves to be willing to let god use us and part of that will didn't watch new orleans of its sin it didn't come as divine punishment it caused suffering yes but it also opened people's eyes to cherish what they had left and to work together to build something better i set out to understand what the apocalypse means to people of many different faiths i had always thought of it as a all destroying doomsday but i've discovered that some people yearn for the apocalypse they want to be free of injustice they want to escape suffering they want a better world apocalypse it's a greek word meaning lifting the veil it's not about war it's about enlightenment it's not about death it's a state of mind and heart that helps us see the truth not some far-off day of judgment it's here it's now [Music] [Music] you

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 6,036,497

Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, perpetual planet nat geo, the story of god, morgan freeman, the story of god with morgan freeman, story of god, morgan freeman god, morgan freeman documentary, the story of god morgan freeman, the story of god morgan freeman full episodes, culture video, The story of god of war explained

Id: ATvKJ_HftNs

Length: 50min 18sec (3018 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 29 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/5o7bot]

The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (TV Series 2016–2019) TV-14

Today, for better or worse, the power of religion touches all of our lives, no matter what our faith. This is Morgan Freeman's journey to discover how our beliefs connect us all. This is the quest of our generation. This is the Story of God.

Documentary, Adventure, History
Rating: 7.8 with 4,996 votes
IMDb

YouTube link is restricted from: United Arab Emirates, American Samoa, Australia, Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Cook Islands, China, Egypt, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Islamic Republic Of, Japan, Cambodia, Korea, Republic Of, Kuwait, Myanmar, Mongolia, Macao, Maldives, Malaysia, New Zealand, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Palau, Saudi Arabia, Solomon Islands, Singapore, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand, Turkey, Taiwan, Viet Nam, Vanuatu, Yemen