The End...But Not

~This post is written to my fellow Christians. ~

It's interesting how there are signs of God and elements of Truth woven through culture and time, it's in Pagan lore, and it shows up in books by modern authors. There are elements of truth amongst the lies and confusion so prevalent in society.

I read an account of Ragnarok (The Twilight of the Gods), which is the tale of the end of the world in Norse mythology. Much of it was very similar to what has been told in The Bible and outlined in  Heaven, by Timothy Keller. Ragnorak contains a fight between the gods where the  world is destroyed. In the end though, the children of the gods survive and begin a new life in a beautiful fresh land. Ragnarok rightly states that the world will be destroyed and a new world created. However, instead of the children of the gods, the children of God will live there. (The children of God are those who believe in the saving power of Jesus' blood and adopted by God. "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God! For that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him." I John 3:1)

There are some books that I wouldn't recommend, but yet point towards the existence of God and of sin by portraying what can happen when one lives without God, which is the reality of life for many, many people. Waterland asks over and over: "Why?" It shows clearly the results of sin and the barriers it creates and how actions build upon each other so that you reap what you sow. The main character asks "Why?" but he knew why. He knew the pain he, his wife, and his father (and others) faced was the result of the wrong he (and they) had done, and this truth is slowly untangled throughout the story.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is another. I only read the first few chapters but I was just now struck with an allegory in this book --which I did not expect as this book makes light of God and contains crass imagery and innuendos (which are why I didn't finish it). In the story, Planet Earth was destroyed and Arthur Dent is presumably the only human to escape. He didn't have any luggage, he didn't get to take anything with him. The author wrote that the knowledge of Earth was just something that existed in his memory. For example  there was no place he could go to pull out a record and share the music of the Beattles with anyone. It was all gone. Like death and rebirth. None of your possessions come with you. But why was he the only human to survive the destruction of Earth? It wasn't by anything he did. His friend saved him. His friend was from another world who brought him along, Arthur Dent didn't do a thing, he just woke up inside an Alien spacecraft after the Earth was destroyed.

I believe the Earth will be destoyed. When people die, they take nothing with them, and the only thing that can save is Jesus. Fully God and fully man, he came from Heaven to Earth to save us from ourselves and from our sin, and our future home is in Heaven which will contain a new Earth, but this time there will be no sin and pain and suffering. Jesus is the friend who saves us.

The Dwarves

The dwarves in The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien have very interesting names, and many of them rhyme with each other or start with the same sound. After finding similar names in stories about Iceland, I wondered where these names came from and if Tolkien made them up.

Christopher Tolkien (son of J.R.R Tolkien) said, "It is at any rate well-known that he derived the names of the dwarves in The Hobbit  from the first of the poems in the Edda, the Völuspá. 'the prophecy of Sibyl' "

 The Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems about Norse mythology and legends (Wikipedia: Poetic Edda).

Although the names are from The Poetic Edda, I found the names (or similar ones) in The Prose Edda, by Snorri Sturluson, translated by Jean I. Young. In this tale, the names are listed as the names of dwarves.

Names from The Prose Edda  (page 41-42) that correspond to/are very similar to that of a dwarf in The Hobbit:

Durin
Dvalin
Dáin
Bifur
Báfur
Bömbör
Nori
Óin                                                          

Thorin                                               

Fili

Kili

Thrór

Thróin                                                  

Glóin

Dóri

Óri

These names are in the order they appear in The Prose Edda. The only dwarf member of Thorin's Company whose name is not in the list is Balin. 

The name "Fundin" also appears in the list and in The Lord of the Rings, we learn that this is the name of Balin's father.

"Eikinskjaldi" is a dwarf from The Prose Edda, and his name means, "With-oak-shield" (41). In The Hobbit, we have "Thorin Oakenshield." Interesting that!

The principle wizard in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is named "Gandalf." The name "Ganndálf" appears in the list of dwarves in The Prose Edda and means "sorcerer-elf" (41).

Book Sources:

Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda. Trans. Jean I. Young. University of California Press, Los Angeles: 1954

J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and HarperCollins: 2009