“End Times”

The Bible describes the End Times as a period of difficulty marked by the Rapture, the Great Tribulation, and the Second Coming of Christ. In anticipation of this, the Bible commands us to stay clear of the decadence, the depravity and the people who partake in it: per 2 Timothy 3:1-5, we are to “understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.”

While this warning is evergreen, bearing relevance in virtually all contexts, serving as the most cautionary of tales and worthy of the patient consideration of all who inhabit this planet, there is a problem becoming clearer all the time as society plunges ever further into the abyss, as society wanders confused and anxious through the fog, stepping ever further through ‘end times’ as we know it. 

There is wisdom in this most cautionary of tales, to be sure, however there is just as much a threat posed by people’s understanding of it. Indeed, the problem with the notion of ‘end times’ is not that it is necessarily untrue or inaccurate, but that the common interpretation is flawed and incomplete, that this interpretation contradicts the duties of the modern disciple, and that the ‘believers’ themselves are just as susceptible to the sinister influences of their time; influences often subtle and not obvious but present everywhere. 

Just as with the people whom we are advised to avoid, we are all subject to the forces characterized above, the forces responsible for the outcomes described. This means that ‘believers’ themselves must always, and today more than ever, hold themselves accountable to the dictates of their faith. This means that this is a challenge to be met, not a mere inevitability to be accepted. The latter is precisely why the notion of ‘end times’ has been so dangerous and disarming, and why the subject is, more than ever, worth revisiting. 

The primary issue with the notion of ‘end times’ lies in the response of the ‘believers’, not merely in the decadence and depravity of the unethical, the immoral or the undisciplined whose transgressions are expected. 

The problem with the notion of ‘end times’ is in practice, that it keeps the people complacent, taking comfort in knowing that the end is near and that any effort to avoid catastrophe or even mitigate the damage is futile. Ignoring or suppressing the instinct to survive, at least intellectually speaking, the believer in ‘end times’ fancies himself a member of the enlightened class, the righteous and knowing. It is the great unknown, to be sure: when or whether we are on the precipice of ‘end times’. However, it does us no good where this notion stands to relieve the people of the present or their obligations to their heirs; it does no good to become complacent or even sanctimonious in the comforts of canonical text; kinds of beliefs which, where misunderstood and misapplied, threaten to undermine the great cause undertaken by our forebears to enable our species to not only survive but thrive. 

Had our predecessors embraced the imminence of ‘end times’, had they shielded themselves from hard work behind tenuous intellectual, quasi-Biblical justifications supporting apathy and complacency, there would have remained little incentive for any of them to invest in the future, to maximize their impact in the lives of those around them, to assume the added risks accompanying these tasks. There would have been little incentive to do anything more than that which is necessary to survive, and even that part would become questionable to the many caught up wondering what is the point of it all anyway. 

This is, indeed, a most sinister outlook on life, on the direction of our species, on our place along the timeline, yet it is particularly destructive where this outlook is shared and encouraged. It is one thing to be prepared for ‘end times’, to warn against the ills and evils of sin, to sound the alarm of the reckoning to come, to encourage people toward honest and righteous living, but it is another to arouse panic with no plan, no desire to make one, or to maintain this inevitability as part of one’s plan to excuse himself from honest and fruitful living. 

The historical record suggests that ‘end times’ may not take the forms expected of the many who speak of it, who preach the gospel or recite scripture; that is not to say that this record discredits the notion or the possibility of ‘end times’, but that, despite the many believers throughout human history, our predecessors did not live to see the actual end of ‘end times’ in the physical world, and ‘end times’ did not free them of the stubborn demands of life on this mortal coil. 

It behooves the believer to consider the possibility that ‘end times’ is merely the progressive decay of standards, integrity and trust within society, within one’s own community; a civilization becoming less civilized, continuing onward — however clumsily — despite a lack of direction and purpose, forgetting the reasons behind the things they do and accept. 

It behooves the ‘believer’ to consider the possibility that ‘end times’ might in fact demand the most from us in preparing our fellow brothers and sisters on this earth for that reckoning; to speak of those standards and principles more often, to share the word far and wide, making every effort to persevere in our principles, to ‘save’ as many people as possible, and to preserve for posterity the potential they deserve to inherit with the richness afforded them in a civilization of men and women sharing in that covenant. A covenant not around exasperation or complacency, not around ideas of surrendering, giving up, or retreating into the nothingness of determinism, but around weathering the storms, forging ahead against the great tempests of our time, keeping strength and discipline throughout. That may indeed be the calling of ‘end times’, and if so, we are right to respond accordingly.