The Story of God with Morgan Freeman

Every morning starts the same.

Coffee and crossword.

And every day things seem to get worse.

Religious conflict.

Climate change.

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,

it's number is...

666.

To discover the roots of judgment day.

The suns of light shall battle the

suns 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.

My first destination is Jerusalem.

The spiritual set of the Jews, christians and muslims.

All three of those fates predicted Jerusalem

will play a role in the end of the world.

It has long been a flash point for religious tensions.

I've come here to meet yoram Hazony,

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 descended to heaven from right that spot,

and over there, the...

of the mount of olives and gethsemane

below where Jesus and his disciples used to meet,

and of course down here is 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 20bc, king herod the great,

build 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 in 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 islamic christianity.

But, in the year 70ad,

the Romans sacked Jerusalem and demolished the temple.

In the centuries since,

Jews have come to pray at it's 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,

why hasn't the temple been rebuilt?

Two reasons.

One is cause the Jews aren't ready and the other

is cause 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,

which yoram 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?

In judaism?

Judaism invented the Messiah,

but it's not the same Messiah that most people think about.

Okay.

'Cause 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 was going to bring peace among

the nations in this world.

And he will not be divine.

He will not be divine.

And yoram tells me this mortal Messiah

has a very specific to do list.

According to Jewish tradition,

he has three things he is supposed to do.

Number one, he's gonna reconstitute the Jewish

kingdom of the Jewish today.

Number two, he's gonna bring peace with the neighbors.

And number three, he's gonna rebuild that temple.

Rebuild the temple.

Here we are, this is 2015, what are you gonna 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,

the Jews want to bring back into the world.

That is the reconstruction of the temple?

The reconstruction of the temple

as 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 the coming of 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 sights in islam.

In fact, it might even trigger an apocalyptic battle.

But, the idea of a violent end of the world is not new.

2000 years ago, not all Jews anticipated the

coming age of peace.

One Jewish sect fervently anticipated

the bloody apocalypse.

Archaeologist, Jodi Magness has taken me to the shores of

the dead sea, where their ancient prophecies were

miraculously preserved.

Welcome to Qumran.

Qumran?

Right, right, this is where the scrolls were found, right?

That's right.

The dead sea scrolls were found in eleven 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.

Essenes?

Uh huh.

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 100bc.

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 scroll.

The war scrolls,

what now, what is that?

That's the scroll that describes a

40 year long apocalyptic war and one of the famous lines

from this scroll says,

"there shall be a war of terrible carnage."

The suns of light shall battle the suns 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 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.

That the people were 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,

combined with things that to us seem to be imaginary.

Like many doomsday cults,