Do you remember that famous line from T.S. Elliott, ‘And this is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.’ During the Cold War when the two superpowers were locked in a deadly nuclear arms race I used to hear many sermons about the end of the world and the second coming of Christ. Nowadays humankind’s greatest peril seems to be a peace-time danger, the despoiling of our environment as a result of our mad scramble for ever increasing material wealth. In the 1960s it was preachers who were the prophets of doom. Today, the prophets are more likely to be scientists, and T.S. Elliott’s picture of the end of the world coming in a ‘whimper’ rather than a ‘bang’ seems quite a possibility.
But our hope is still the same: the Coming of Christ and the eternal Kingdom of God.