The End of All Things

Why do things have to end? Jobs come to an end, relationships go up in smoke, family moves away, etc… One could argue that when one thing ends, something better begins. Baloney, endings stink. New beginnings are all well and good, but I don’t like it when something that I think is good ends. My children are at the point where they are getting closer and closer to the day they move out and continue life without Betsy and me. I’m going to miss them. I’m going to be unhappy when this phase of our family life ends. I understand why it has to. I understand the benefits of my children going off on their own. I still don’t like the prospect of an important part of my life ending.

Immediately after the distress of those days;

“‘the sun will be darkened,

    and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
    and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. Matthew 24:29 NIV

  

The Bible talks a lot about endings. In the above passage, Jesus talks about the destruction of Jerusalem, the tearing down of the Temple and the return of the “Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky”. I look forward to meeting Jesus on his return to our world, but I’m not too thrilled about all of the end talk. The Bible speaks about lots of things that are going to end before Jesus returns. Cities, civilizations, the Sun, Moon and the Stars. It’s all going to be swept away when God’s great Day of Judgment comes.

 

Does that mean that my home disappear from the cosmos for all eternity? Yes.

What about my flower garden? It’s really pretty and I would hate to see anything bad happen to it. Forget it buddy, its Gone.

How about all of the stars, planets and galaxies I see in my telescope? Sorry Bill, but it’s all Caput.

The funny thing is modern physics predicts this very same thing. Entropy is defined as a measure of the disorder of things in a system. Increasing entropy is when the number of variables increases, which is happening as the universe expands. Decreasing entropy is when the number of variables decreases, which happens at the center of the sun. Increasing entropy leads to less interaction between objects. Decreasing entropy leads to increased interaction. So, if you shove lots of stuff together into a star, the stuff interacts, gets energized and produces light and heat. If you separate the stuff of the expanding cosmos by greater and greater distances, light and heat will not be produced. The universe will get cold and dark. This is the current mathematical model for the future of the universe. Increasing entropy means no more flower gardens.

“I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” Revelation 21:2 NIV.

The good news is, the Bible says at the end of all things there will be a new beginning. The universe will be remade into a new creation. Everything will be set right, and there will no longer be suffering, pain or death. The new cosmos predicted in the scriptures will be a heavenly cosmos. This will be bad for those of us who don’t like endings. But it gives us hope for a happy ending. Which is a lot better than a universe that ends up cold and dark.

God bless you,

Pastor Bill