Within religious groups there are many views as to how and when their awaited teacher will appear.
Ideas vary from the extremely concrete to the largely abstract.
One Buddhist sect, for example, holds strictly to the literal meaning of an ancient text given out, as legend has it, by Gautama Buddha. Many Hindus believe that the new divine incarnation will manifest Himself as the god Kalki, seated on a white horse. For fundamentalist Christians it is unthinkable that the Christ could return in any other way than on a cloud at the end of the world. To all such groups, any suggestion that these prophecies are symbolic, and possibly even distorted, is unacceptable. An example is the biblical statement that the timing of the Christ's return is known to no one, not even to the Christ Himself.