Is this the end? Considering the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest throughout the country and the entrenched political polarization, I have had this question posed to me on more than one occasion. And now as I sit down to write this article, I am watching the attack on the Capitol Building with horror and disbelief that this is happening in the United States of America. Is this the end, indeed?
When I look up synonyms for the word, apocalypse, the suggestions I get are destruction, disaster, catastrophe, Armageddon and Judgement Day. This word that comes to us almost without change from the Greek – apokalypsis – has most comprehensively come to mean, the end of the world.
Spoiler alert! I do not know if this is the end, or the beginning of the end, and neither does anyone else. And yet, as our guest speaker this past Sunday (January 3), Pastor Steve Babbitt, from Spring Valley Community Church reminded us, our lack of information about the time of the end – and in our Christian context, the return of Christ – has not stopped people throughout the centuries predicting both the end of the world and the precise date of Christ’s return. Further, I am sure you can imagine with me that people throughout the ages that have faced various devastating natural disasters and brutal wars, easily convinced themselves that they were living in the end times and that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent.
