The End of the World as We Know It

Over at On Faith, the fine folks at The Washington Post and Newsweek asked their panelists,

Do you believe the world will come to an end? If so, where, when and what will it look like?

The Anglican response comes from Bishop N.T. Wright of England in his essay, Read the Book; You'll Know How It Ends in which he says,

The NT [New Tsetament] picture is for heaven and earth to be joined together in a great act of renewal (Revelation 21-22), or for the new world to be born from the womb of the old (Romans 8), or for everything that destroys and defaces the present world to be defeated and overthrown, including death itself, which means not that the world will be destroyed but precisely that the forces of such destruction won't have the last word (1 Corinthians 15.20-28).

The great irony here is that a lot of muddled Christians are relentlessly opposed to Darwinism on the grounds that they believe in Genesis 1. Often the same people have no concern at all for what Genesis 1 insists on, namely that the space/time/matter creation is the good creation of the one good God -- who will, according to both Old and New Testaments, set creation right at the last by bringing together its two dimensions (heaven and earth) into one. That, after all, is what Jesus taught us to pray.

Columnist Cal Thomas agrees, writing,

The "world" will not end. It will be transformed, even re-created.

You can browse what all the panelists have to say here: On Faith: End of the World

I have written of this sort of thing in the sermon The Problem with the Rapture and we have a resource page on Revelation at Demystifing Revelation.

How would you answer their questions...Do you believe the world will come to an end? If so, where, when and what will it look like?

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor