Growing up fundamentalist, I spent a lot of my childhood thinking and worrying about the end of time as predicted in the New Testament book of Revelation. I was taught that history would come screeching to a halt and the world as we know it would dissolve in some kind of apocalyptic judgment.
I remember listening to a lot of sermons about the end of the world, particularly the plight of those who did not acknowledge Jesus as savior. They would be “left behind” to face terrible judgment. My father, an evangelical minister, was one of the moving forces (and also one of the actors) behind the production of the movie A Thief in the Night, which Time magazine recently referred to as a “church basement classic.”
For several decades I didn’t think much about the end of time. A professor of New Testament at the evangelical college I attended once remarked offhandedly that one’s belief in the sequence of the “end times” should have no affect whatsoever on how a believer lives from day to day. That struck me as uncommon wisdom – then and now.
Recently, however, I’ve begun to think once again about the end of the world. Specifically, I’ve wondered if the phenomenon of global warming, which appears to be virtually ineluctable, will bring on the kind of apocalypticism described in the book of Revelation. Please understand that I’m not saying that it’s so – and I’m certainly not wishing it were so – but you have to admit that there would be some kind of poetic justice in this scenario. Ultimately, humanity, because of our avarice and our narrow self-interest, will bring about our own destruction.
Something to think about.
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