When will the world end?

Howard Taylor

“No-one knows the day or the hour” said the Lord. That seems to indicate that we should not be surprised that the one time we could have been sure that Christ would not come was in the year 2000. There were too many people expecting it!

When I said farewell to Glasgow Presbytery in September 1998 I mentioned in my speech that I believed in the Second Coming of Christ. A retired minister wrote to me thanking me for making that statement because he had never heard the Second Coming mentioned in Church of Scotland circles before!

The street preacher carries around a poster telling us: “The end is at hand”. No one takes him seriously but one day he will be right. Even from a non-religious point of view our earth, sun and universe will not last forever.

Not that all accept this. There are some completely secular expectations of never ending life. For example two very distinguished scientists who believe that one-day very complex computers will be live persons with all our memories and consciousnesses say:

At its final collapse it (the universe) will transform itself into a computer re-producing you and me.

At the instant the Omega Point is reached, life will have gained control of all matter and forces, not on in as single universe, but in all universes whose existence is logically possible; life will have spread into all spatial regions in all universes which could logically exist, and will have stored an infinite amount of information, including all bits of knowledge which it is logically possible to know. And this is the end. (Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, OUP page 1986 p. 677)

We should certainly take the street preacher’s warning more seriously than the absurd hope expressed above.

From a Christian point of view I find it impossible to believe that God is going to allow this world just to continue with wars, hatreds, wickedness, suffering and death for ever. The time must come when He says `Stop!’ Both Old and New Testaments tell us that this `stop’ will be sudden and unexpected. There is going to be no slow maturing to righteousness. In this early part of the 21st Century we have come to realise how easy it is to believe in a sudden end to this world.

Yet is the Biblical promise a promise of an end to this world?

Certainly some parts of the Bible tell us that the earth will be burned with fire and destroyed. (Isaiah 24, Jude etc etc). Yet other parts of Scripture teach us to wait for a renewed earth full of peace and righteousness with nature itself reconciled to humanity and humanity reconciled to God. (Psalms 96 and 98, latter sections of Isaiah and Romans 8). It seems then that there is to be both a continuity and discontinuity between this world and the world to come. If we think of Christ in whom God and humanity, heaven and earth are brought back together we see in His birth and resurrection this continuity and discontinuity. He has human ancestors but is conceived in His mother’s womb `from above’. He rises bodily from the tomb yet He is different - standing, as it were, on the boundary of this world and the next. Out of death has not come a miraculous resuscitation of a corpse but a new Creation. Is this not how we are to regard the new heaven and earth – belonging to this present world but also a new birth from above; a death followed by a new creation?

The early Church saw the two comings of Christ as really two different aspects of the one Coming of the Kingdom. Forgiveness of sins, healing the sick, judgement on the wicked, resurrection of the dead, deliverance from evil – all of which we see in the first coming of Jesus - are to be universalised in His Second Coming.

So when will this be accomplished?

We do not know. However Jesus tells us over and over again to watch for the signs.

What about the destiny of the world?

The Bible leads us to expect that wars and natural disasters will be a constant feature of world history. Towards the end of the age we can expect and intensification of these things together with the added dangers of bombardment of the earth by meteors and the like. Jesus tells us that as the time of His Second Coming draws near, wickedness, knowledge and travel will greatly increase.[1] (Nothing wrong with the latter two of course.) Evil will not, though, have the final say in the destiny of creation; for beyond the death of Christ was resurrection - a resurrection that enfolds all creation.[2]

What about the history of the Christian Church?

The New Testament leads us to expect that throughout the Church’s history, just like the churches of the New Testament, it will have wonderful life mixed with appalling faults.[3] Towards the end of the age many will fall away from the faith and the love of many will grow cold. Nevertheless, by the grace of God, the gospel will spread to all nations.[4] In other words, as this age draws to its close, parts of the world where the Church has been strong will see a major decline in godly faith and parts of the world where the gospel is new will see a major expansion of the faith of Christ.

What about the destiny of the very people who, in the purposes of God, represented us all in the rejection of Christ so that the world might be forgiven?

Over and over again the Old Testament prophets tell us that, the history of the Jews will be unlike the history of any other people, and that towards the end of time, after great suffering, the Jews will return to the promised land, where they will become the centre of hostility. This hostility will affect the whole world.  Eventually God will reconcile them to their Messiah, cleanse them from their sin, judge the nations who have hated them, and make them a blessing to all peoples.[5] The New Testament is not silent about this purpose of God.[6]

What then we should do?

If we are truly one with Christ, then we will share his love for our lost world and His sorrow for

its sufferings. This is why we can never be indifferent to all the oppression, injustice and wars that exist. Although we should not fear these things we should be passionately concerned for truth, peace and human dignity for all people. Although the church can never fully establish the kingdom of God on earth, we may influence the world for good far more than we imagine. We must hold fast to our faith not compromising it according to the fads and fashions of the age we live in. We must also seek to understand the world so that we can be effective servants of Christ in it.

As the 'salt of the earth' and the 'light of the world' we must work to prepare a way for the coming of the Lord as we strive in his name for the cause of goodness among  peoples  and nations. (Prayer and discipleship are our powerful instruments.) Only as we so serve the Lord will we be ready for the coming of his eternal kingdom.

===============================================================================