The End.

[Dimmesdale]

Thinking about the end of the world and the end state…. If there is a benevolent personal God as in Christianity, it seems possible that there could be a happy ending. However, if God is only Nature than nature doesn’t seem to care and there is only desolation in the future…. When the end of time will come, will it come by divine fiat, per a spiritual awakening, or some other means? When will humanity enter into eternity? Is it even sane not to believe that the world will be saved somehow and stopped from utter annihilation?

Take global warming. Just one thing that is very troubling. Just one thing. And there are many others. How will humanity survive? Will it survive at all? Is there any basis for rational hope? I think there is, because I believe in the end of time when all of us will become ONE. How this will happen, I however do not know. And that troubles me.

[Sojournerofthearth]

[Replying to post 1 by Dimmesdale]

So, Dimmesdale, your belief tells you what will happen but not how or why?

I can see where that might be disconcerting. According the Bible, if one is so inclined, it tells us what, when and how... it lays out a plan, it gives a reason for why man exists, what man's potential is supposed to be and how to attain it... and it even gives the whole of mankind a second chance to get it right. Why you were born, what happens when you die... why men suffer... it answers all those niggling questions.

But, eventually, we will all be on the same page and we will be one.

Soj

[Dimmesdale]

[Replying to post 1 by Dimmesdale]

So, Dimmesdale, your belief tells you what will happen but not how or why?

One word: entropy. That, or other factors that will certainly wipe out humanity. Global Warming, or the sun expanding, or social degeneration, etc. Given enough time, leaving it up to Nature alone, humanity is bound to be wiped out. Death reigns supreme, in the END, at least. Again, entropy. The tendency toward disorder, chaos, degeneration, nothingness. This seems inevitable if one does not include something to mitigate such forces (such as a supernatural Rescue).

[Divine Insight]

It seems obvious to me that we can't do anything other than return to the state we were in before we got here. I can't imagine why that should bother anyone.

[Sojournerofthearth]

[Replying to post 3 by Dimmesdale]

One word: entropy. That, or other factors that will certainly wipe out humanity.

Well, on that point, you are absolutely correct. In fact, it says in Matthew

For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. (Matthew 24:21-22 KJV)

So yeah. We're gonna do it. But God will step in before we completely off ourselves. That's the Good News.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by Dimmesdale]

As one of Jehovah's Witnesses I have when the bible speaks of "the end" it means not the end of all life on earth but the end of human suffering... surely a good thing.


JEHOVAH'S WITNESS