When Will the World End?
HOW MUCH DO WE KNOW?
When will the world come to an end? It is instructive to read Jesus’ words on this topic:
“But as for that hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father.” (Mark 13:32)
Well, if Jesus didn’t know I certainly don’t! However, this doesn’t mean that asking the question is pointless, as there are still lessons we could learn by thinking about it.
A Scientific View
One of the things that has prompted these thoughts for me are the speculations of physicists. The most common view seems to be that the universe is running down, that is, gradually losing energy. If that continues indefinitely the universe will suffer what they call ‘heat death’ and the whole show will basically just splutter out. For a more scientific way of expressing it you could look up this wikipedia page. This is an extract:
The heat death of the universe (also known as the Big Chill or Big Freeze) is a hypothesis on the ultimate fate of the universe, which suggests the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy, and will therefore be unable to sustain processes that increase entropy. Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other processes may no longer be exploited to perform work. In the language of physics, this is when the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium.
The Bigger Picture
Physicists deal solely with the material world, so they are simply trying to work out from within what is currently known about the physical world what logical conclusions could be drawn on that basis.
However, the physical universe exists within the larger context of reality as a whole.
Science does not form the outer boundary of knowledge, but deals only with what could be known about the physical world simply on its own terms.
In the bigger picture, the created world exists ‘within’ the Creator, so that speculation on God’s plan forms the larger field of inquiry. This does not all remain a matter for mere speculation.
God’s revelation has confirmed that this current order of things will pass away and that God has a plan to draw all earthly things in their current form to a close and lift them up, transforming them into ‘a new heaven and a new earth’:
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Apocalypse 21: 1-4)
This transformation will be inaugurated at some time in the future with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. After the universal judgment, the righteous will reign for ever with Christ, glorified in body and soul, the universe itself will be renewed: The Church … will receive her perfection only in the glory of heaven, when will come the time of the renewal of all things. At that time, together with the human race, the universe itself, which is so closely related to man and which attains its destiny through him, will be perfectly re-established in Christ. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1042)
We Won’t Be Waiting That Long
I don’t believe that the world will end with the universe finally running down as envisaged in scientific speculation. Things will never get anywhere near that far. I believe the end will come on some specific day in some specific year while human beings still populate the earth.
I have two reasons for thinking this:
The ‘new earth’ will be this world transformed.
Christ’s First Coming has already occurred on a particular day in a particular year.
This World Transformed
Biblical descriptions of the end of the world can convey the impression of destruction, calamity, catastrophe. Some might conclude from this that God will obliterate this world and create a new one from scratch.
God never intended that sin would enter the world, and that human beings would suffer and die. God intended that this world would be a paradise for us, and if He decided at some stage to give us the further gift of the Beatific Vision, that this would involve a peaceful transformation into the New Creation, not a rupture with the earthly paradise.
It is this world that Christ came to save, and this world includes humanity as integral with the whole of creation, not floating off in the clouds somewhere. God wanted to create us as bodily-spiritul beings. Our bodies, and this world in which bodies are natural, is the world God will transform into something new and greater.
Christ Has Already Come
In Old Testament times the idea gradually emerged that God would send a messiah, a christ, an anointed one, to save His people. This general kind of idea is one that we could imagine arising in various cultures. Given the suffering and death which has characterised human existence through the ages it’s not unlikely that people would long for someone who could save them from all that. Because of that some might think of a ‘saviour figure’ as simply an example of mythology. It could be seen as a way to sustain hopes in situations that seem hopeless. But surely no one would be naive enough to believe that such a saviour would actually come?
Yet we know that in fact the promised messiah did actually come. He was not a mythic figure but an actual human being, an individual born on a specific day in a particular place. He was just as much a part of actual history as anyone else.
The idea of the end of the world leading to a new paradise could likewise be thought of as a myth. Here we are, still suffering and dying, still awaiting salvation, and still needing a source of hope to sustain us. So it is not surprising that, again, there are those who see the Christian story as simply another myth, one among a class of such myths.
Yet, just as what some thought of as mythological turned out to be real in the First Coming of the Christ, so too Christ’s Second Coming will be just as real, and just as historical. It will occur on a particular day and year sometime in the future, while there is still a human society living on earth.
Like Jesus when he was on earth, I don’t know when that will be, but for the reasons outlined above I believe it is certain that the end will come as an actual human-historical event, albeit then signalling the end of history in the usual sense.
As well as being a speculative exercise, this conclusion is also more relevant to the drama of salvation in which we are all living. I suppose it is normal these days to think that the end of the world will be off in the remote future somewhere, perhaps many thousands or millions of years from now. Perhaps it will. But we don’t know that. It could be in 2037. Or 2214. Or maybe even in 10,251. Or next year.
One thing we do know is that Jesus himself emphasised the urgency of our situation. And that’s another area where I’m inclined to think Jesus knew more than I do!
In this context you might like to read Jesus and Noah.