Words from the Rock
See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in My name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and will mislead many. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.
Matthew 24:4–8 NASB
For more than two thousand years, generations after generations of believers have been expecting and predicting the end of the world. Many of them expected it to end within their own generation—for good reason too. The atrocities that happened during some people’s lifetimes were enough to make anyone long for life as they knew it to come to a screeching halt. Religious persecution, torturous deaths, bloody religious wars, plagues and pestilences, droughts and floods, earthquakes and hurricanes . . . all seemed to indicate that the end of the earth was near.
So predictions continued, and sometimes churches created doctrines based on their predictions. Sometimes they picked dates for when the earth would end. Some still pick dates today.
What is Jesus’s response to all this? He says that all these things will happen—wars, famines, earthquakes—and that they’re just “the beginning of birth pangs.” What does that mean? The moment of childbirth is unpredictable. Some women experience only a few birth pains and then give birth. Some experience hours and even days of birth pains—which feel like an eternity—and finally the baby is born. In other words, it could be a short time or a long time. Only God knows.
Guess what? The end is near. In fact, it will be within your lifetime. Yet you don’t even know how long your lifetime will be, so how can you know the end is near? Because everyone’s earthly life will end. It always does. So whether your end will be a death of natural means or a result of the predicted “end of the world” is kind of irrelevant. It will happen. The question is, will you be ready?
My Prayer
Dear God,
Only you know when the end of the earth will be. Please help me to focus on staying connected to you instead of worrying about things I cannot control.
Amen.
Final Word
This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us.
1 John 1:2 NLT
Stone for the Journey
Jesus holds my future in his hands.