Introduction

Abstract

Could God’s guidance, available to previous generations as religious histories tell us, simply cease to be accessible at some point? Has this already happened; is it about to happen? Assuming these questions are clear enough, at least the following potential answers can be given to them: (1) Yes, this has already happened—the revelations of “prophets” such as Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad are already irrelevant to modern life; (2) no, knowledge and adherence to divine revelations has not faded away, but this might happen soon, in the near future, that is—or some may want to put it this way—we will soon be unable to access or make sense of any of these “divine revelations”; (3) no, this will never happen, because God will never abandon humanity. I deliberately ignore (for now) answers that make distinctions among the different revelations, saying that some will survive because they are the true revelations while the false ones will wither away. I ignore this family of answers for several reasons; for one, I am not writing about all the religions for which the aforementioned prophets or other sources of God’s guidance are relevant. Nor do I plan to mediate amid different claims to the truth.