It will happen soon.
The prophets warned that the destructive and disastrous day of the Lord is near. Zephaniah says it’s near and coming quickly. God told Ezekiel that the fulfillment of every vision was now near. And in particular, that the day of the Lord is near, when the nations will be doomed. When God told Habakkuk about the end, he said it will come and will not delay.
Paul told his followers that the day was almost here, even nearer than he’d thought. He told them to stop acting like they were going to go on living in this world, because the time is short, and the present world is passing away.
Letters from other early Christian leaders have the same message: This is the last hour. The end of all things is near, because the Lord’s coming is near. Jesus will come in just a little while, and will not delay.
The book of Revelation claims to be about what will take place soon. It repeatedly says the time is near, and it repeatedly has Jesus say he’s coming soon.
It will be delayed.
When God told Habakkuk that the end would not delay, he also contradicted himself. He suggested that if you’re looking forward to the end of the world, you’re going to have to wait for it.
Jesus told multiple parables in which the events corresponding to the second coming were described as a long time in coming, or only happening after a long time. He did this to correct the misconception that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once. He said if you hear about wars, it’s not the end of the world. And even if someone says he’s Jesus and that the time is near,1 Jesus says that’s a deception and you should ignore him.
And according to a passage in Revelation, the last judgment apparently isn’t going to happen until all Christians are dead.
It already happened thousands of years ago.
The answer the Bible most commonly gives to the question of when the world will end is the most absurd one: It has actually happened already, way back in biblical times.
God told Noah that he was about to put an end to all people, destroying both them and the earth. If God said it, it must be true. The earth doesn’t exist anymore, and there haven’t been any people in over 4000 years.
Daniel predicted that God’s everlasting kingdom would come once Babylon had been taken over four times after Nebuchadnezzar. In reality, Babylon has already been taken over more times than that. Yet it has been “left to another people” rather than to God, contrary to Daniel’s claim.
Daniel also had a vision about the time of the end, where an angel said it would only take 2300 days (less than seven years) before the vision would be fulfilled. He had another vision later, about the last judgment, which also had an angel telling how long it would be before it was fulfilled. And the angel’s answer in that one is generally taken to mean just three and a half years. These predictions would put the end of the world way back in the 6th century BC.
The angel then stated that those words would be sealed up until the time of the end. Since they’re not sealed up, since we have had access to those words all this time, the time of the end must have already come a long time ago.
Jesus said the end would come as soon as the gospel had been preached throughout the whole world. In fact, he said his twelve disciples would not even finish going through the towns of Israel before Jesus came. Since Jesus had obviously already come by that time, he must have been referring to his second coming. Well, the Bible says the disciples did preach everywhere, so that means Jesus must have already returned.
Plus it says Paul preached in all Judea. And he said the message had gone out into all the earth, to the ends of the world, and the gospel had been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. If that’s all true, the world definitely should have ended a long time ago.
Jesus said his generation would not pass away until all the events of the end of the age happened and the whole world passed away. And more specifically, he said some of his disciples he was talking to would not die before they saw him coming in his kingdom. So Jesus must have already returned almost 2000 years ago, when not all of the twelve had died yet.2
Jesus said when Jerusalem is conquered, you’ll know the kingdom of God is near. Jerusalem was conquered just a few decades later. Since Jesus specified a future event when the kingdom would be near, rather than just saying the coming of the kingdom was near, he must have meant that the kingdom of God wasn’t near yet. So if the coming of the kingdom is near the destruction of Jerusalem, but it’s not near the time a few decades earlier when Jesus was talking about it, that clearly means that the kingdom is coming just a few years after the fall of Jerusalem, not thousands of years after. Jesus was saying the world would end just a few years after that event that happened in the 1st century AD.
When the apostles received the Spirit and started speaking in tongues, Peter explained what was happening, claiming that this was a fulfillment of a prophecy about the last days. So the end can’t have been too much later than that.
The culmination of the ages was back in Paul’s time. Paul wrote about what was true if anyone was in Christ. I’m not sure what exactly “in Christ” is supposed to mean, but it didn’t sound like he thought it wasn’t the case that anyone was. So we can assume he was saying that what follows from someone being in Christ was already true… which was that the old creation had gone, and the new creation had come. Paul also said he was among the people who would still be alive when Jesus came back. So that means the second coming must have happened back before Paul died.
Other letters from early Christian leaders at that time also claim that they were living in the last times, the last days, or the culmination of the ages.
It didn’t already happen.
Of course, the Bible also says the second coming and the day of the Lord have not already come. Paul says you can ignore anyone who tries to deceive you by telling you things like that, even if it’s in a message that appears to be from him. Looks like a lot of what we call the Bible is fake, according to the Bible.
We will know when it’s about to happen.
So that’s all very confusing. How can we know when the world is going to end, when the Bible is so inconsistent on that topic? Can we know at all? Jesus says it is possible to know. There are signs that tell you it’s near, just like there are signs that tell you when summer is near. He says when he returns, you can’t miss it. If the second coming had already happened, everyone would know. And Paul says it’s not like the day of the Lord is going to surprise everyone like a thief.
We will not know when it’s about to happen.
Why did Paul say that, when he had just been saying the day of the Lord will come like a thief, suddenly destroying people who were expecting peace and safety? Well, I think he’s trying to make a distinction: Christians will know when to expect it, but that knowledge will somehow be limited to them, and no one else will be able to find out for some reason. Except the Bible says Christians won’t know, either.
Jesus agreed that his coming will be a deadly surprise for the world, just like Noah’s flood, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But he wasn’t just talking about non-Christians being surprised. He was talking directly to his own followers when he said he was going to come like a thief at a time they wouldn’t expect him. And when he told them a parable where the master returns at a time when a believer doesn’t expect him. And then Revelation has him talking to Christians when he says he’s coming like a thief, and they won’t know when he’ll come.
Peter was writing to Christians when he said the day of the Lord, when the world will suddenly be destroyed, will come like a thief. And it doesn’t really sound like he thinks the people he’s writing to are in on the secret of when it’s going to happen. He just expects them to hope it comes as soon as possible.
Only God knows when it will happen.
Jesus says you have to just be ready at all times, because you don’t know when he’s going to return. It’s not for humans to know the dates that God has set. In fact, not even Jesus knows when the world will pass away. Only God the Father knows that. So you can ignore people like Jesus when they say it’s coming soon. Those guys don’t know what they’re talking about.
It will never happen.
Whoops, never mind, the Bible says the world is actually never going to end at all! God has established the earth forever, and it will remain forever. As for that whole coming kingdom of God thing, Jesus says it’s not what it sounds like. It’s not something in the future that’s going to put an end to the current world. He says it’s here among us already.
(And no, this last section doesn’t resolve the contradiction. It only further contradicts all the parts of the Bible that say the earth is going to be destroyed, and the kingdom is yet to come, etc.)