The End is near! And I am not just talking about the end of the year. Nor am I just talking about the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Can you believe that we are in 2008 already? It seems like yesterday the world was frazzled over Y2K. Do you remember back in the 1960’s, the men on the street corners carrying the signs that read: “The End is Near”? I remember seeing these guys while I was growing up. They would be on the news and even on the street corners of my hometown. Most times people would just dismiss them as crazy or fanatical but there was always that looming question that I never had the nerve to ask them; “How do you know that the End is near?” That was nearly fifty years ago, so, a lot of folks have dismissed these fellows as just plain wrong. This kind of ruins it for anyone else coming along preaching the same thing. It is like what Peter said in his second epistle: “First of all you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’” 2Peter 3:3,4 Some folks feel ‘it’ and some folks don’t. When you look at the world by itself and how one day rolls in right behind another and the future continues to be amalgamated into the present, then there is no real logical reason to think that the end is near. The sun will rise tomorrow and the sun will set tomorrow. Life will go on just as it has. There is no evidence that time will stop as we know it, if we just go by that which is transient. Sure, things are passing by quickly but that doesn’t prove that an ‘end’ is inevitable, or even probable. Someone may say, “I am old and my life is coming to an end.” And then, I am telling you, “That five more babies will be born to take your place and life will go on.” Someone else may say, “The scientists are telling us that the sun will burn out! The End is Near!” Yeah, if you consider a hundred, hundred million years a short time.

Here’s another dilemma; if we evolved like the scientist theorize, then we exist in time like fish exist in the water. It would be impossible to conceive of an of ‘end’ to this existence just as it would be impossible to conceive of a ‘time’ before this existence. But for some reason man can conceive of a beginning and an end. This conception can only be attributed to Something outside of this ‘time’ existence. And, that would be God!

Now, the reason I said all that was for one purpose only. If we ‘know’ that the end is near, then we can know for certain that we were made for something more than just this existence. We have trials, afflictions and hardships in this life. Maybe, just maybe, God wants us to know that we should ‘hang in there’ –the End is Near. Paul says that our troubles are momentary but our reward is eternal. The visible is only temporary but the unseen is permanent! Life as we know it is ebbing away, but he who does the will of the Lord will live forever –and that, in a greater existence than this temporary one! At the close of this year and with new hopes for the next, let us look up, for our Redemption is drawing near. Yes, the End is Near!