Are We in the End Times?

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The last days began with Christ

The Letter to the Hebrews opens: “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son” (Hebrews 1:1–2; see Hebrews 1:2). At Pentecost St. Peter explained the outpouring of the Spirit with the prophet Joel: “It will come to pass in the last days,” God says, “that I will pour out a portion of my spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17; see Acts 2:16–21). And St. John told his readers, “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. Thus we know this is the last hour” (1 John 2:18; see 1 John 2:18–22).

With the death and resurrection of Jesus the decisive event of history has already happened. Everything since is the time of the Church, in which the Gospel goes out to the nations and the world waits for its Lord.

No one knows the day or the hour

Jesus said: “But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36; read on this site). Mark adds, “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33). When the disciples asked about the kingdom just before the Ascension, he answered, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority” (Acts 1:7; Acts 1:6–7). This is why the Church has never set a date.

What must come before Christ returns

The Catechism names conditions that Scripture links to the Lord's return (CCC 674–677):

• The Gentiles and Israel. “The glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by ‘all Israel’” (CCC 674), whose full inclusion will follow “the ‘full number of the Gentiles’” (Romans 11:25; see Romans 11). Meanwhile “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).
• The final trial. “Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers” (CCC 675). Scripture speaks of an apostasy and of the man of lawlessness, and the Catechism says “the supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist” (see 2 Thessalonians 2:3, Who is the Antichrist? and What is the great apostasy?).
• Victory from God, not from history. The kingdom will be fulfilled “not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil” (CCC 677). The Church passes through the trial with her Lord (see What is the Rapture?).

The Church has never said these conditions are now met. Falling away and false messiahs have appeared in every age (CCC 676; see What is the thousand-year reign?).

Why date-setters have always failed

The first warning came from St. Paul, who told the Thessalonians not to be alarmed by any “spirit,” word or letter claiming “that the day of the Lord is at hand” (2 Thessalonians 2:2; read on this site). In the third century St. Hippolytus told of a bishop in Syria who led his people into the desert to meet Christ, and of another in Pontus who announced the judgment from his dreams; when the day did not come, their flocks were left in scandal. Hippolytus answered with a reckoning of his own, placing the end about AD 500, meant, as scholars commonly read it, to calm the panic; that date passed too (St. Hippolytus). Later writers told of mass terror as the year 1000 approached; historians now regard those stories as much exaggerated, though some did expect the end then. In 1844 the followers of William Miller waited through what became known as the Great Disappointment, and many predictions since have come and gone. These were often sincere people who longed for Christ. Their error was not their love for his coming but their confidence that they could know what he said no one knows.

What Jesus asks instead

Each discourse ends not with a chart but with a call. “Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42). “What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’” (Mark 13:37). Then, in Matthew 25, three pictures of readiness:

• The ten virgins. Those whose lamps were full “went into the wedding feast with him,” and the parable ends, “Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Matthew 25:10, 13).
• The talents. The servant who used what he was given hears, “Well done, my good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). Readiness is faithful work, not idle waiting.
• The Last Judgment. “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40; Matthew 25:31–46). Readiness is love for the poor.

And for those who see dark times: “But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand” (Luke 21:28).

Hope, not fear

Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Spe Salvi: “The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life” (2). Even the judgment is good news: “The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope” (Spe Salvi 44; see Benedict XVI on hope). The Church's oldest prayer about the end is not a cry of dread but of longing: “Maranatha,” “Our Lord, come!” (CCC 671).

Private revelation is not a timetable

Many end-times claims come through messages attributed to Our Lady. Even approved apparitions are private revelation: “It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history” (CCC 67). When the Holy See published the third part of the secret of Fatima in 2000, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled” (The Message of Fatima). Akita sets no dates either. Their call is the Gospel's: prayer, penance, conversion. See Apparitions the Church has examined.

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