What do we know about the End of the World?
Where is the world heading? How will it all end? Are we in the ‘end times’? Will there be a ‘secret rapture’? What is the ‘millennium’? These are questions which we find asked often in the modern world, and many claim that we are in unique times when these questions are singularly appropriate.
But you don’t have to look very far into history to see that people have always asked these questions! Harold Camping hit the headlines a few years ago for making specific predictions about the date of Jesus’ return—and then having to offer a new date when the previous one passed without incident. In 1844, William Miller predicted that Jesus would return on October 22nd; in response, his followers sold up land and homes, and when the date passed they experienced a crisis known as the Great Disappointment. Many in Europe in the year 999 expected Jesus to return the following year, and convened great gatherings in the fields to prepare.
Others argue that the state of the world shows that we are in the ‘end times’, with the growth of globalisation, computer technologies which are changing society, and the climate crisis. Yet we have faced great crises before—both diseases, like the Spanish flu, the Black Death, and the plague of Justinian, and wars all through history have had a devastating impact—yet history has not come to an end.
I wrote these notes for the Bible Reading Fellowship’s Guidelines notes, and they have just been published. (You can order them online here.)
When we look at key passages about the end of the world, it turns out the Bible says something more complex and yet more simple than we might have thought. The anticipation of the ‘end times’ actually has a central place in Christian discipleship—but it does not involve anything to do with predicting dates or looking for ‘signs of the times’! Let’s explore these passages together and prepare to be pleasantly surprised.