end of the world

135:5.2About one hun­dred years be­fore the days of Je­sus and John a new school of re­li­gious teach­ers arose in Pales­tine, the apoc­a­lyp­tists. These new teach­ers evolved a sys­tem of be­lief that ac­counted for the suf­fer­ings and hu­mil­i­a­tion of the Jews on the ground that they were pay­ing the penalty for the na­tion’s sins. They fell back onto the well-known rea­sons as­signed to ex­plain the Baby­lo­nian and other cap­tiv­i­ties of for­mer times. But, so taught the apoc­a­lyp­tists, Is­rael should take heart; the days of their af­flic­tion were al­most over; the dis­ci­pline of God’s cho­sen peo­ple was about fin­ished; God’s pa­tience with the gen­tile for­eign­ers was about ex­hausted. The end of Ro­man rule was syn­ony­mous with the end of the age and, in a cer­tain sense, with the end of the world. These new teach­ers leaned heav­ily on the pre­dic­tions of Daniel, and they con­sis­tently taught that cre­ation was about to pass into its fi­nal stage; the king­doms of this world were about to be­come the king­dom of God. To the Jew­ish mind of that day this was the mean­ing of that phrase—the king­dom of heaven—which runs through­out the teach­ings of both John and Je­sus. To the Jews of Pales­tine the phrase “king­dom of heaven” had but one mean­ing: an ab­so­lutely righ­teous state in which God (the Mes­siah) would rule the na­tions of earth in per­fec­tion of power just as he ruled in heaven—“Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

135:5.3In the days of John all Jews were ex­pec­tantly ask­ing, “How soon will the king­dom come?” There was a gen­eral feel­ing that the end of the rule of the gen­tile na­tions was draw­ing near. There was pres­ent through­out all Jewry a lively hope and a keen ex­pec­ta­tion that the con­sum­ma­tion of the de­sire of the ages would oc­cur dur­ing the life­time of that gen­er­a­tion.

135:5.4While the Jews dif­fered greatly in their es­ti­mates of the na­ture of the com­ing king­dom, they were alike in their be­lief that the event was im­pend­ing, near at hand, even at the door. Many who read the Old Tes­ta­ment lit­er­ally looked ex­pec­tantly for a new king in Pales­tine, for a re­gen­er­ated Jew­ish na­tion de­liv­ered from its en­e­mies and pre­sided over by the suc­ces­sor of King David, the Mes­siah who would quickly be ac­knowl­edged as the right­ful and righ­teous ruler of all the world. An­other, though smaller, group of de­vout Jews held a vastly dif­fer­ent view of this king­dom of God. They taught that the com­ing king­dom was not of this world, that the world was ap­proach­ing its cer­tain end, and that “a new heaven and a new earth” were to usher in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of God; that this king­dom was to be an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion, that sin was to be ended, and that the cit­i­zens of the new king­dom were to be­come im­mor­tal in their en­joy­ment of this end­less bliss.

135:5.5All were agreed that some dras­tic purg­ing or pu­ri­fy­ing dis­ci­pline would of ne­ces­sity pre­cede the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom on earth. The lit­er­al­ists taught that a world-wide war would en­sue which would de­stroy all un­be­liev­ers, while the faith­ful would sweep on to uni­ver­sal and eter­nal vic­tory. The spiri­tists taught that the king­dom would be ush­ered in by the great judg­ment of God which would rel­e­gate the un­righ­teous to their well-de­served judg­ment of pun­ish­ment and fi­nal de­struc­tion, at the same time el­e­vat­ing the be­liev­ing saints of the cho­sen peo­ple to high seats of honor and au­thor­ity with the Son of Man, who would rule over the re­deemed na­tions in God’s name. And this lat­ter group even be­lieved that many de­vout gen­tiles might be ad­mit­ted to the fel­low­ship of the new king­dom.

135:4.3For two and a half years John lived at En­gedi, and he per­suaded most of the broth­er­hood that “the end of the age was at hand”; that “the king­dom of heaven was about to ap­pear.” And all his early teach­ing was based upon the cur­rent Jew­ish idea and con­cept of the Mes­siah as the prom­ised de­liv­erer of the Jew­ish na­tion from the dom­i­na­tion of their gen­tile rulers.

176:1.6Even af­ter this ex­plicit warn­ing, many of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers in­ter­preted these pre­dic­tions as re­fer­ring to the changes which would ob­vi­ously oc­cur in Je­ru­sa­lem when the reap­pear­ing of the Mes­siah would re­sult in the es­tab­lish­ment of the New Je­ru­sa­lem and in the en­large­ment of the city to be­come the world’s cap­i­tal. In their minds these Jews were de­ter­mined to con­nect the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple with the “end of the world.” They be­lieved this New Je­ru­sa­lem would fill all Pales­tine; that the end of the world would be fol­lowed by the im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance of the “new heav­ens and the new earth.” And so it was not strange that Pe­ter should say: “Mas­ter, we know that all things will pass away when the new heav­ens and the new earth ap­pear, but how shall we know when you will re­turn to bring all this about?”

176:4.2Je­sus did, on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions and to many in­di­vid­u­als, de­clare his in­ten­tion of re­turn­ing to this world. As his fol­low­ers awak­ened to the fact that their Mas­ter was not go­ing to func­tion as a tem­po­ral de­liv­erer, and as they lis­tened to his pre­dic­tions of the over­throw of Je­ru­sa­lem and the down­fall of the Jew­ish na­tion, they most nat­u­rally be­gan to as­so­ciate his prom­ised re­turn with these catas­trophic events. But when the Ro­man armies lev­eled the walls of Je­ru­sa­lem, de­stroyed the tem­ple, and dis­persed the Judean Jews, and still the Mas­ter did not re­veal him­self in power and glory, his fol­low­ers be­gan the for­mu­la­tion of that be­lief which even­tu­ally as­so­ci­ated the sec­ond com­ing of Christ with the end of the age, even with the end of the world.

176:3.2“And even you, Thomas, fail to com­pre­hend what I have been say­ing. Have I not all this time taught you that your con­nec­tion with the king­dom is spir­i­tual and in­di­vid­ual, wholly a mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the spirit by the faith-re­al­iza­tion that you are a son of God? What more shall I say? The down­fall of na­tions, the crash of em­pires, the de­struc­tion of the un­be­liev­ing Jews, the end of an age, even the end of the world, what have these things to do with one who be­lieves this gospel, and who has hid his life in the surety of the eter­nal king­dom? You who are God-know­ing and gospel-be­liev­ing have al­ready re­ceived the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. Since your lives have been lived in the spirit and for the Fa­ther, noth­ing can be of se­ri­ous con­cern to you. King­dom builders, the ac­cred­ited cit­i­zens of the heav­enly worlds, are not to be dis­turbed by tem­po­ral up­heavals or per­turbed by ter­res­trial cat­a­clysms. What does it mat­ter to you who be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom if na­tions over­turn, the age ends, or all things vis­i­ble crash, since you know that your life is the gift of the Son, and that it is eter­nally se­cure in the Fa­ther? Hav­ing lived the tem­po­ral life by faith and hav­ing yielded the fruits of the spirit as the righ­teous­ness of lov­ing ser­vice for your fel­lows, you can con­fi­dently look for­ward to the next step in the eter­nal ca­reer with the same sur­vival faith that has car­ried you through your first and earthly ad­ven­ture in son­ship with God.