The End of the World—and a New Beginning

In the Biblical book of Mark we find an intriguing exchange on this question between Christ and his disciples as Christ sits upon the Mount of Olives.

Bewildered by Christ’s prophecy concerning the destruction of the temple, the disciples pressed Jesus for a date for when the destruction would occur. In a well-known response, Christ outlines a series of events that would occur before the end of the world. These events included such things as false prophets deceiving the faithful, wars and rumors of wars, famine, pestilence, and earthquakes. Moreover, Christ promises that His gospel would be preached in all the world to all nations before the end comes:

Jesus said to them: Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in My name, claiming, ‘I am He,’ and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. – Mark 13: 5-8.

These intriguing passages grip the mind and cause us to feel a sense of foreboding about the end of the world. But could the end Christ spoke about in the gospels have already come and gone, and could we now live in a new period of human existence? Could the “birth pains” Christ describes symbolize the world’s tremendous travail during the past two centuries?

At first this doesn’t seem possible. The end means the end; not an event that anyone could miss. Endings are cataclysmic, climactic, and final—or is that so? Can any of us pinpoint the exact moment that childhood ends and adolescence begins? Endings always mark the beginning of a new, entirely different experience. However, they often happen in a very subtle way, unassuming and easily missed.

The Baha’i Faith teaches that the end-time prophecies found in the Bible and in other Holy Books concern the cycle of divine guidance the Creator provides humankind. Those cycles, and the divine messengers that bring them, usher in the dawning places (“the beginning”) of God’s new revelation to humanity. They also confer the supreme divine authority while on earth (“the end”); and act as doors to the heavenly realm, bridges to a deeper awareness of the soul’s eternal connection to its Creator.

Baha’is look at it this way–whenever a new prophet and messenger comes to us from the heavenly kingdom, we experience the end of the previous cycle of divine guidance and, simultaneously, the beginning of a new cycle. Endings and beginnings always go hand-in-hand:

Know that the return of Christ for a second time doth not mean what the people believe, but rather signifieth the One promised to come after Him. He shall come with the Kingdom of God and His Power which hath surrounded the world. This dominion is in the world of hearts and spirits, and not in that of matter…Verily Christ came with His Kingdom from the beginning which hath no beginning, and will come with His Kingdom to the eternity of eternities, inasmuch as in this sense “Christ” is an expression of the Divine Reality, the simple Essence and heavenly Entity, which hath no beginning nor ending. It hath appearance, arising, manifestation and setting in each of the cycles. – Abdu’l-Baha, quoted by Dr. J. E. Esselmont in Baha’u’llah and the New Era, p. 224.

Understood in this light, we can appreciate Christ’s end-time prophecies as recorded in the gospels in a profound new way.

We have definitely experienced “wars and rumors of wars”—the two world wars in the twentieth century, and the Cold War after them, fit that description perfectly. Famines have certainly claimed the lives of countless human beings. We have undergone a multitude of ravaging earthquakes. It would appear that the “end” these signs point to has already occurred.

So what happens after the “end of the world”? Does life suddenly roll up into a ball of nothingness–or is there, as with every ending, a simultaneous new beginning?

The Baha’i teachings tell us that the end of the world Christ prophesies means the end of one divine cycle and the beginning of the new one destined to fulfill it.