The End of the World for Christianity
What does the end of the world mean?
It is not so common that a religion includes the coming of the end of the world in its tenets. In this regard, Christianity is unique to claim the coming of the world in its tenets.
However, since the rise of Christianity, the end of the world has not come in these 2000 years. Today, no serious men seem to believe in the coming of the end of the world, though at the end of the 20th century some apocalyptic theories were widely taken up by the general public.
The 20th century was a century of wars. Tens of millions of people were killed in wars in the 20th century. Apocalyptic theories were widely talked about. But the mankind survived the 20th century. The Soviet Union collapsed and China adopted the market-based economy. No large-scale nuclear war occurred finally in the 20th century.
The 21st century began with the 9/11 terror, but nobody today seems to believe that the end of the world will come sometime in the 21st century.
And, for any individuals what is important is his death but not the end of the world. And in these 2000 years, many Christians died without seeing the end of the world if they had believed in the apocalyptic theory. What does the teaching about the end of the world in Christianity mean to those who died in these 2000 years?
It is also interesting that Christ Jesus described the situation when the end of the world came near. It means that Christ Jesus requested us to believe in the theory of the coming of the end of the world. He requested us to live with a notion that the end of the world would surely come.
So, to understand the meaning of the end of the world, we have to live believing the teaching of Christ Jesus on the end of the world.
Then we may see that the end of the world has come but people don't realize it and the world itself does not realize it, either. If so, believers do not have to live in such a world being ended. The minds of these believers would leave the world.
The end of the world might mean that this human world gets so deteriorated that it is no more worth believers' living in it.
The world today looks like sufficiently being deteriorated with so many Muslim refugees living and moving around Europe and the Middle East, the deplorable American Presidential election going on, China's intensification of military power, etc. From a viewpoint of Christ Jesus, the world must be ending really in a global scale.
If you don't see this end of the world for Christianity, you may not be Christians at all.
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Rev 2:25 But that which ye have already hold fast till I come.
Rev 2:26 And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
Rev 2:27 And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.