The gospel is Matthew 24:15-28. Destruction and tribulation will arrive at the end of time, and when they and it are at your doorstep, get out of town, especially Jerusalem, with what’s on your back, head for the mountains, and once you’re sure this isn’t the usual distress from war-mongering, and you’re certain the big moment is imminent, and you believe you’re one of the elect, welcome resurrection, which will be announced by lightning in the skies. Material wealth will be put aside and false prophets vanquished. And the eagles will feast on those who don’t measure up in the Last Judgment.
The best lesson in this is that it’s not useful or realistic to think it can’t happen to you. Or here. What your options are are for you to figure out. Bach’s librettist dwells on the horrors facing those who come out on the wrong side of the Last Judgment. Immediately in the first movement the imagery is violent and vivid. And after a catalogue of admonitions in the alto recitative, the trumpet (with a part almost impossible to play) of war and judgment appears in the aria for bass and strings, in which is described the punishment for the faithless and errant.
It is remarkably modern in its applicability, much of which can easily be found in today’s world. The half a million soldiers killed in one month alone at the Somme, Nazi extermination camps at the rate of ten thousand executions daily, the long death of Gaza and Palestine, the destruction of Baghdad and Damascus, the expulsion of the Rohingya, the incarceration of children seeking asylum in the United States. The list is endless.