Top ten reasons this is not the end of the world

Okay. Time for a new blog entry. I've been trying to write, but failing throughout much of the pandemic. I've only been brave enough to admit that I am afraid. Warning - this entry is dumbed down as my brain is slow at the moment...

I’m an armchair expert in eschatology from a Christian perspective. That is the study of the end of the world for newbies. It is something we should be interested in. And I've got good news and bad news..

Firstly, although this is not the end of the world, we are a little bit closer and the hope of leaving earth before the sun collapses, explodes or whatever it is expected to do, is not, in my opinion, going to happen. Similarly, we simply are not going to evolve into spiritual beings who escape death. Not going to happen. We are also unlikely to escape this sick planet onto another planet either. Not impossible, but unlikely....

Welcome to the good news, or Gospel as we call it. Can you sense my heaviness as I write? Everything is conspiring to stop me from writing this, but you have a right to know. So here’s the bad news first. There is probably much less time left than you think. That, as you know, is a dogmatic statement. I can’t possibly know can I? No-one knows do they? We may destroy the world with nukes or we may have millions of years left before we rip the planet apart. Well, you and I don’t have millions of years. The bad news is that we almost certainly have a lot less time left than most people think.

The pandemic is not the end of the world. It is a result of the fall (as in the Bible fall, the original curse). It just happens. I won't get into the theological stuff regarding who is to blame and why God allows suffering because the greatest minds have not been able to solve it satisfactorily. So I don't think some obscure blogger will either. And you are unlikely to be able to do so either. Sorry.

But here are your top ten reasons why this is not the end of the world, if you are into this kind of thing…  It is supposed to bring you a little peace, that there is hope for the children, should you have them...



1. The Jewish temple has not been rebuilt. Sorry, but that has to happen if it is the end of the world according to most of the Christian meta-narrative. And do you know how many prophecies have really been fulfilled in our lifetimes? One. Uno. The Jewish people returning to Israel. The rest of the prophecies have always been going on. And you know what? Those who believe in the rapture will tell you that it could happen at any moment. But it is extremely unlikely. Because even this debated event is based on other things happening first...

2. You’ve got to look very hard at the Biblical prophecies. Here is number two and it is debatable. Jesus said that the love of many will grow cold. It is debatable. But there is still love and mercy and despite our selfishness, people can be loving.

3. A bit of a biggy. Visit The Joshua Project, it's an online statistical analysis of the great commission (the only commissions some of us get). According to the prophecies given from Jesus and the prophets, the whole of the world must hear the gospel. Yeah, God loved the world so much that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him might basically make it through to Heaven. But according to our favourite stats, we are only about 60% through. So does this mean that we are more concerned about this great commission rather than the other signs? No. In fact, this really big fact is probably the most ignored sign. We don’t like it because it means there is a lot of work to do. And as many know, immantisising the eschaton is an actual thing. In layman's terms that means trying to bring about the end of the world.

4. You’ve got to go deep into internet territory to get this one. I will put two-in-one for fun. Apparently the Nile will dry up, according to scripture. It hasn’t but maybe it did once and wasn’t recorded. No religious leader tells you this stuff (Which is why I’m blowing the whistle). And the second? Damascus in Syria has to be destroyed. Sorry Damascus. Still going strong there though, despite a few hairy moments recently.

5. OMG the Sun will turn to sackcloth and the Moon to blood. This kind of speaks of more than just eclipses and blood moons. So, before we feel too smug, remember that the Sun and Moon are symbolic references to our parents, if the Bible is to interpret the Bible and blah blah blah. And the stars to our siblings. And the end of the world to our own deaths. But the prophecy is literal too.

6. 6. 6. Nice obscure one for your attention. In the apocrypha Maccabees says that the Ark of the Covenant will be found in the very last days. Apparently it was made of acacia wood. Not sure how it is supposed to survive but think Indiana Jones. For those interested, it seems likely to be hidden in the mountain ranges of Jordan somewhere. Good luck finding it.

7. Oh, I’m sorry, where does the antichrist happen to be? Not here for a start. Not Trump. Not the Pope. Ain't nowhere to be seen. There are a lot of nasty characters out there, but that's all. No-one is a particularly good contender at the moment for that dubious position. I have been taught that he will most likely be a politician.

8. Again, slightly obscure, according to prophecies, Israel has to prosper within history. No problem with that, but at the moment the country is in survival mode. Nice defence policy though. Buy New Israeli Shekels.

9. Hey, apparently there is a timeframe in which the Messiah, or the Christ has to appear. Jewish people largely reject Jesus so they are largely expecting a Messiah to appear before 2240. Do the math. That gives us 220 years. Hurrah? (I've just realised my maths is wrong even though I was in the top set at school and got a B)... Might not be the Messiah of course as it is doubtful we will get a better one than Jesus.

10. Oh, I don't know. There is no Season 4 of Stranger Things. Whatever. Could be anything. Fill in the blank.




Some of these are debatable. But if the temple gets rebuilt you have to run to the hills. The vaccine is not likely to be the mark of the beast despite what Kanye West may say. It's the arm, not the hand or forehead. But don't get too smug, governments have hinted at stopping travel for those who don't take the vaccine. That's not fair is it? It's freaky. It's weird. And by the way, the people who are getting demonised are those who are questioning. The demonised are not the ones in power. That's not normal. That's freaky.

Finally, don’t you think it is kind of funny that the end of the world just so happens to have come at the same time as the digital revolution where news and information is shared so instantly? Unless we are under Sod’s Law, we have a little more time. And no, non-believers, not so much time as to evolve and escape the earth on spaceships before the sun kills us all, blasting us into smithereens.


Think happy thoughts.

We're not ready for the end of the world

A few years ago I wrote an article for a niche US publication in which I speculated that there could be a referendum on Britain leaving the EU (even the re-election of the Tories, the only party offering this, seemed unlikely at the time) and that this could possibly relate to eschatology (note to the uninitiated – eschatology refers to the study of the end of the world).

We are not ready for the end of the world.

I’m really not any kind of prophet and I don’t claim to be, but it reminded me that just sometimes I can be right. Just sometimes. (My wife would say ‘very, very occasionally’). I’ve always preferred beginnings to endings, but I am still fascinated by the theories and mythology that accompany the end of days. In story terms I prefer beginnings, the blank page, the start, the hook and the possibility. But endings naturally fascinate many of us. We want to know what is going to happen in the end and we want it to satisfy. Part of us wants to see the sky fall.

As better people than me have said: ‘We face immense adversity’. Most of us. We face all kinds of problems. I’m going to spare you the pessimism of my Christian worldview as I’m not a literalist and I don’t really know how the end times are ever going to pan out. Some people say that the end times can be mitigated through prayer and preparation. But safe to say I don’t think we are in the last of the last days yet. If there is anything I have been conscientious in, it is in not alarming people by saying that the world is about to end imminently. I have never misled people in this. To be honest, I’ve rarely led people at all, but please indulge me unless you think I have no care for you as a reader. I have usually been as honest as I can be, I have a little integrity. So despite rumours to the contrary it is not the end of the world. There is hope for your children (if you have them) to live full lives without the fear of getting raptured (and, believe me, in some circles, there is a lot of fear surrounding the rapture). 

Things are grim on this island for many of us these days in 2017. There is no getting round it. I think it was the TV series ‘Lost’ where a character exclaims: ‘…we're just going to go crazy waiting for the next bad thing to happen’. Lost was about a group of survivors stuck on an island and that may sound like a familiar plot to us in the UK.

Seriously, even if the rich elites stockpile gold and have reinforced boltholes in Alaska because they ‘know things’, it still doesn’t mean that the world is about to end. They live in fortresses like Prospero’s castle in Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. But my theory is that things were just as grim in 1666 when the plagues hit Britain and the great fire of London burnt it all out. They blamed the terrorists then too – except they said the terrorists were Catholics not Muslims. It is convenient for a Government to have an enemy like that. It is in the Government’s political interest for us to have a common enemy of flesh and blood. When really we should be fighting together against so many other adversaries that are not human or animal.

I was so fascinated by eschatology that I wrote a whole fictional novel about it for the writing contest NaNoWriMo, speculating about end of the world scenarios. Accepted thinking is that the earth is destroyed by the sun in millions of years and that the hope for humanity centres around finding the technology to occupy some other world. But even then, accepted wisdom is that, eventually, the universe will either expand or collapse into some kind of oblivion. There is no hope. We’re doomed, if you subscribe to the narratives of scientific speculation… and they are narratives and speculation (unless we are somehow able to transcend the physical universe or you are able to see some kind of strange beauty in transience and meaninglessness).

Christian thinking is that there are not millions of years. That what is left are the last raindrops of a storm and that another storm is coming. But my point is that we are not prepared for nuclear holocaust, a third world war or the opening of the abyss from the hadron collider. We are not the generation to deal with these things on top of all the rest of our problems.

What I’m trying to say is this – whether you are fascinated by beginnings or endings, by the past or the future, you have to accept that our interest in current affairs and in what will become of us is almost certainly (and I’m 99% sure) going to revolve around the sun getting turned to darkness, the moon to blood and the stars falling from the sky. When I say this I’m using the Bible’s own metaphors when it comes to sun and moon and stars. In the story of Joseph in Genesis, Joseph has a dream in which the sun is a metaphor for his father, the moon for his mother and the stars for his siblings. Presumably the end of the world, and the end of all our worlds is the loss of our own lives and that of our friends and family. Some suns have already darkened. Some moons have already turned to blood. Some stars have fallen. And this is sad and real and something we all face if we have not faced it already – it is going to happen. We can’t escape it through a portal or through any other means. I’m sorry, but as Jim Morrison said, ‘No-one here gets out alive’. All we can do is prepare. Or distract ourselves.

However it feels at the moment for some of us, it is unlikely that we are the last generation. It is a coincidence too far that just as the digital, information and news revolution has taken place that we somehow suddenly face the end of the world too. We are more likely to lose our own suns, moons and stars and experience our own world ends on a micro level. And so, on that level, yes, suffering is always going to be with us and we are always going to be afraid as long as we live and the end of the world could be imminent (quite probably through house fire, car crash or some disease (please check your smoke alarms – I have too few readers already and don’t want one less)). We are unlikely to die from a terrorist attack. I’m sorry, but we’re just not. We are unlikely to die through an end of the world scenario. We are likely to die before the end of the world takes place and who knows if we will ever see how that happens.

I’m a little sad about the jaded tone of this blog entry. But that’s not the end of the world.

Think happy thoughts.