Looking to the End of the World)

In my last post I discussed the moral makeup of humanity that we expect for the last days, and that the popular morality of that time would certainly be sinful and depraved. It remains for us to consider whether we now live in those last days, though. For if we do, that would be a strong indictment of the social movements of the world today.

As it turns out, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and as the name suggests, one of our unique beliefs is that God has pronounced this to be the last dispensation, the last days before the end of the world and the second coming of Christ. Because of the testimony I have gained of the other tenets of this gospel, I take this matter of being in the last days on faith. Thus, I do believe that we live in the final age foretold.

But even without adopting the paradigm of my church, I believe there is still a strong case to be made for us being in the end times. And certainly, this is not a very rare opinion among Christians. Many, from all different sects, have also expressed the opinion that the world is ripening for destruction, and that things seem to be aligning for the prophecies given in the Bible.

Of course, Christians have been making these predictions basically since Christ’s ascension. I, myself, make sure to keep a healthy skepticism about any immediate second-coming predictions. Even though I say we live in the latter days, I don’t presume to know whether that means we are 5 years from the second coming, or 500. It will come when it comes, and I will happily welcome it, whichever side of the veil I’m on.

But let us look at a few reasons why now appears to be a likely candidate for the end times.

Reasons to Assume Latter Days)

1. The depravity of the world. Certainly, the world has always known tremendous evil, including the very worst of what we see in the world today. But what makes this time especially evil is how even so-called followers of God have abandoned His commandments and justified the sins of the world. We slaughter our unborn, we watch videos of strangers having sex, and we cheer for the murder of our political rivals, all while calling ourselves Christian. There have been other times historically where God’s people abandoned Him, and those times have always immediately preceded their destruction. It seems probably that when the current family of God abandons Him, that their destruction would likely be one-and-the-same as the destruction of the entire world.
2. The fulfillment of prophecies. Perhaps every era of history can lay claim to wars, rumors of wars, and evil abounding, but there are some prophecies of the end which are only fulfilled in these times or are only possible to be fulfilled for the first time now. The most prominent of these is the return of the nation of Israel. Less than fifty years after Jesus’s death Jerusalem was destroyed and the last remaining Israelites displaced, making it then impossible for Jesus to return to them there, though it was prophesied in Zechariah 13 that he would. It was only in the last century that the historic land of Canaan was restored to the Israelites, both fulfilling some end-time prophecies, and paving the way for others. Also, this is the first time when there has been such great global connection, allowing for the war of good and evil to play out on a universal scale, fitting the descriptions we have of the end.
3. We happen to live in years whose numbers are meaningful. We are around 2000 years from the death and resurrection of Jesus, potentially 6000 years from the beginning of Genesis. If Jesus were to come in the near future, it would fulfill the pattern of six 1000-year-long days, leading into the seventh day of rest. We also see numerous calendars terminating and resetting around this time, including the Mayan, the Essene, the Zoroastrian, and more.
4. We live in a time of global destructive power and acceleration. Technology and society are evolving at a pace that has never before existed. We have developed weapons capable of the utter decimation of society, and a social culture that changes every year. The potential of catastrophic system failure is only accelerating, and the worldly turmoil only makes that occurrence more and more likely.
5. There is simply a sense of reaching the end of an era. The world has completely changed multiple times in the last 250 years and seems to be doing so again right now. We can feel the tides turning, the divisions expanding, the gravity shifting beneath us. It feels like we are at least at the end of a world, and given all of the above criteria, it seems it could well be the end of the world.

When I was a child, I only believed that we were preparing for the end, not that we were actually in it. Today I do believe we are in that 11th hour. Again, I do not know how long this period will last, but I believe that the prophecies detailing the end of the world apply to us today, including those that describe a fallen and morally bankrupt generation. Tomorrow I will examine what that means for trends that are current and popular, and how any who live to follow the consensus should immediately reconsider that.