One day the world will end, and all things considered, I’m not too sad about it. There’s no reason it should worry me. God has everything under control, everything will kick off when it’s time to. But sometimes it’s interesting to think about.

When you look up ‘the end of the world’ on google, the first two responses are to Wikipedia (at least for me they were), the first is about a pop song titled ‘the end of the world’ and it might not be the one you’re thinking of.

The second result links to a Wikipedia page called “List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events”. So clearly it’s a popular topic to think about.

Now, I haven’t read the whole thing, nor do I feel like I need to. It’s a pretty long list. However my favorite section of the list is the bit called “Far future predictions“. It’s an entertaining read, if this sort of thing doesn’t give you anxiety.

The entries range from a prediction about the population of the earth based on probability and statics, to the sun exploding, and the ultimate heat death of the universe. Fun times. It’s a good thing I won’t be around to see most of it happen.

Even when I asked Chat GPT how the world was going to end, it gave me a list of 14 different things that are deemed to be the most common concerns amongst us earth goers.

I’m not here to place any bets. Though it’s sometimes fun to discuss with other Christians, taking guessing as to how God is going to go about it, and trying to figure out what the book of Revelation actually means.

There are probably many smarter people out there than I who can answer some of your questions if you are concerned about how the world will end. There are also people, who I’m quite fond of, who are what they call ‘preppers’ who focus more on preparing to deal with emergencies instead of just getting freaked out by them. And while I’m not sure there is a lot you can do in some of these situations, trying to be prepared for whatever life throws at you is usually a very good idea.

There is one way, if you know your bible, we can be pretty sure that won’t be the way the world ends, and that is a world wide flood.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m getting at, reading Genesis could be a good idea.

Long story short, a long long time ago, God got sick of the world being evil and had a mind to start again (I trust that we deserved it), so he drowned it. Flooding the whole world, saving only one man and his family, and a whole bunch of animals in a really big boat. Fun story, go read it.

The story itself is very interesting, and if you haven’t at least heard of it before, I have questions. But at the end of the story, after the food subsides and the Noah gets off the boat, God sends a rainbow as a promise that he won’t send a world-wide flood again.

Now, local floods are a different story, just saying. But a global flood is not something that I’m going to worry about. So there.

I have to say the book of Genesis is one of my favorite books in the bible. From the creation of the universe and some of the questions you can ask about how exactly that happened, -because modern science doesn’t exactly cover it- to the fall, the flood, and the tower of Babble, then the whole history of Abraham and his adventures. It’s a good book to read, and it covers a wide range of topics. About some topics it goes into great and sometimes excruciating detail, yet about others it hardly mentions at all.

The world before the flood is one of these mysteries. Even according to biblical records, we don’t know much about life before the flood that covered the world, but from what we do know, that’s probably just as well.

It won’t be for no reason that God said these words.

‘The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”’

Genesis 6: 5-7.

But there is much to this entire part of Genesis that sparks my curiosity. Beyond the culture and the whatever evil things they were doing. But I have so many questions about other, possibly mundane things. Like the cities and the land, and the climate. What was the world like back then?

The world right now is mostly covered in water. This is a pretty big clue that a world wide flood once happened.

I know some people who pass theories back and forth about what might have happened. There are stories all around the world of floods in various mythologies. Even such stories such as Atlantis, and these make me wonder what the world looked like before the flood.

We know from the bible that rain didn’t happen until the flood. Think about that. There was no rain before the flood. What a weird world that would be.

If there were less oceans back then and more land on the surface of the world, theories abound that the climate also might have been very different. That there were no strong seasons, and no strong winds. That maybe it was the tilting of the earth that did it, the creating of the world’s axial tilt that started it, causing this great changing of the world. Or maybe some other celestial event, like something going on in the solar system.

Who knows, but I find it all fascinating.

The world must have been a very different place back then, no matter the theories and the details, even just the fact that people lived for hundreds of years pre-flood, is enough to boggle my mind. It’s something I can’t help but wonder about every time I read genesis.

I could think about how terrifying it must have been to be one of the people left behind, and even for Noah and the people who had been saved, it would have been scary. Having never seen proper rain before, all of a sudden there’s water everywhere. I’ve never been in a flood before, but the picture scares me. Then there’s all the other things you could focus on, like how weird it would have felt to be only people left alive on the the earth after you got off the boat. And the amusing realization that even after having been nearly wiped out, pretty soon mankind was back to doing evil and disobeying God’s commands, having obviously not learnt their lesson the first time.

This is a trend in the bible, and indeed in life.

One day the world will end, for good this time. I’m glad it wont be by flood. But I’m not going to think too hard about the other options either.

There are lots of more immediate problems for me think about that are closer at hand. Some I can’t do much about, like the trashy economy, the rather worrying political state of the western world, the increasingly less theoretical one world order, the great reset, world war 3, and arbitrary taxes.

But there some things I can do maybe…

Like trying to stop evil when I see it, trying to encourage those around me, Listening before I speak, and being careful what ideas I let take root in my mind.

Here’s a thought. Growing as a person, and learning to deal with whatever life throws at me without freaking out is probably the best way to deal with the growing list of impending emergencies. I’m a far cry from that yet. And while being prepared certainly won’t hurt, the best thing I can think to do, is to grow my relationship with God, so that when I do see him one day, end of the world or no, it hopefully won’t be an awkward conversation.

Anyway, like I said in the title. Some rambling thoughts about the end of the world.

I’m sure it will happen. I’m sure it won’t be a flood, and I’m also sure that there’s nothing I can do about it.

I’m equally sure (more so, in fact) that God knows what he’s doing.

If you find yourself thinking about the end of the world a lot these days, and it worries you, my advice to you would vary depending on what state your life is in, or more specifically your soul.

If you’re current life and behavior lines up more with those who were left behind in Noah’s flood, rather than those who were on the boat, maybe there’s something else you need to think about.

Are you on the boat?