The End of the World

Reading some ancient visions of mystics and other Saints, it is clear that the vast majority of them were focused on Jesus or His blessed Mother seeking to help them get to know God better. A few spoke of the end of the world, but it was usually in vague terms, and not specific enough to elicit unhealthy speculations.

Nowadays, it seems everyone wants a vision of the end times. Of course, if understood rightly, the end times can help us to understand Jesus better, but that is not the focus of most who are dwelling on this subject today. And, furthermore, the obsessive focus on end times actually takes people away from Jesus.

When we look at the New Testament, every time someone fixated on the end of the world (or even just a temporal disaster), the Lord would tell them to stop getting distracted from the task at hand. Christ and the Apostles often said we do not know the day or hour, so just stay faithful.

Someone came to me the other day asking if I thought the end of the world was near. Just to get her reoriented to a more godly concern, I said, "no, I don't think it will be for another 2 million years". "What?! Why?!" was the response. I told her, "Because we have far too much work still to do in this world for Jesus to let us off the hook and just end everything!"