I've spent some time recently re-examining the most translated quote in all of human history: "For He sent His Son into this world not to condemn it, but that the world through Him might be saved." It originates from the Gospel, and has been spoken on the lips of men, women, and children on all seven continents, in almost every tongue known to have existed, including many tribal dialects which are now extinct.
But what does the quote mean? To me at least, it is an affirmation that the forces of evil, and those aspects of humankind which have indelibly sided with them, will not be allowed to completely destroy the Earth we live on. They may damage it, and they may scar it, but they will not completely destroy it, as they will soon nearly have the power to do.
We are living in an Age in which such destruction has become a distinct possibility. By that I do not mean simply rendering the Earth uninhabitable to human life and driving our species to extinction, but completely annihilating the Earth, and blowing it into small bits and pieces. A teaspoon of antimatter, which scientists are increasingly able to harness the power of, would be enough to destroy an entire city, while a gallon of it, if detonated deeply enough within the Earth's crust, would tear a continent-sized landmass out of it. And a single conventionally sized antimatter warhead would be sufficient to destroy the Earth almost in its entirety. This is not just science fiction; it is rapidly becoming scientific fact.
In such a world, it takes less faith to believe that humanity is flirting with catastrophe than to believe that we will survive. And yet, two millennia ago, a solitary man walked the Earth who predicted both would happen: that our species would both come within a hair's breadth of destroying its own home, and also fail in its unholy efforts.
What I've found most interesting about the above quote, however, is not what it clearly proposes, but what it conspicuously leaves out. For it states that "the world" will be saved. Not all of humanity, nor even a small portion of humanity. In fact, it makes no mention of the people who inhabit this Earth even being candidates for salvation, much less a majority of the human race being granted a place at the heavenly table.
Perhaps that is what prompted Christ's followers to ask Him who if anyone could be saved. His responses to their inquiries proved in no way reassuring: "Enter into heaven through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate which leads to destruction, and there are many who take it", and "for mortals nothing is possible, yet through the heavenly Father all things are possible", and "all the tribes of the world will mourn when the Son of Man comes in His glory". To me, these quotes imply that, if left in humanity's clumsy hands, the Earth would in the end be unsalvageable, which is why the Earth's fate will not be left in our hands.
So is humanity destined for extinction then? The scriptures state otherwise. The Lord promised Abraham in the Old Testament that his sons and daughters would be "more numerous than the stars in heaven". Obviously that many people could not fit upon one Earth, which would imply some manner of starfaring civilization which had been promised for a portion of humanity. But it would only take a small handful of humans to realize that dream, out of the billions of miscreants who currently inhabit this Earth. The rest, perhaps myself included, would be at best but hitchhikers in the grand scheme of our people's history, and at worst a negligible footnote in the annals of time.
Regardless, it is difficult to deny at this point that, given our trajectory, there will be extremely difficult times to come, and that there will be suffering "like nothing which has come before or will ever come again" in the words of Christ. And again in His words: "The love of many will grow cold"; that is, if their hearts are not frozen already.
So I wish all of you the best of luck in the coming years, decades, centuries, or even millennia. However much longer it may be before these questions are definitively answered is but a blink of the eye on the cosmic clock, which has already counted aeons up until this day, and will count many more before the end of time.
Add new comment