What One Theologian Says about the End of the World

One of the greatest living Christian theologians, Jürgen Moltmann, has this to say about the “end of the world” as portrayed in the apocalyptic literature of the Bible:

‘The end of the world’ is one side of the dawn of a new world from God, the side that is turned towards us and which we experience. Israel’s apocalypses, and Christianity’s too, expect that the world will end with terrors that are as yet inconceivable. But they look through these coming terrors to the beginning of a new creation of all things.

That is why these apocalypses, Jewish and Christian both, reach out for the image of the ‘birth pangs–the labor pains–of the End-time’. The birth of a child involves its mother’s pain, and this pain goes together with ‘sorrow’ (John 16:21); and in the same way the pains and sorrows of the End-time–if we see them retrospectively, and in the outreach of hope–are simply the inevitable accompaniments to the new birth of the world. The downfall of this world is really already Act One of its deliverance…

The reason for the apocalyptic hope in the downfall of the world is pure faith in God’s faithfulness. It is not optimism. God will remain faithful to his creative resolve even if the world he has created founders on its own wickedness. God’s will for life is greater than his will for judgment…

Apocalyptic expectation is not stolid resignation to fate. It raises up those who are cast down. True apocalyptic teaches people to ‘lift up their heads’, and to be open for God’s new beginning in the breakdown of this world system which they perceive.

(The Coming of God, pages 229-230)

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