In August of 1996, a red calf was born on a kibutz in the Jezreel valley. She was named Melody and thousands of Jews and Christians were hoping this animal would fulfill the biblical requirements for a red heifer, a sacrificial animal. Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg wrote a book, entitled The End of Days. His chapter on Melody is entitled "Cattlemen of the Apocalypse". He says thousands of embryos have been frozen that they might survive the End!

Then the dawn of the new Millennium: it came with a whimper instead of a bang; but it did not dampen the enormous enthusiasm for end time religion.

I still remember the first time I heard the stirring words:

The market place is empty, no more traffic in the street;

All the builder's tools are silent, no more time to harvest wheat

Busy housewives now cease their labors, in the courtroom no debate.

Work on earth is suspended as the King comes through the gate.

The king is coming, the king is coming, I can hear the trumpet sounding, and now his face I see!

All of this is intoxicating! It is captivating! But ... is it true? Is it reliable? Is it of real significance in the things of God? How important is this fascination with the rapture, the return of Jesus, and the End of all things? Is this at the center of what Jesus meant when he said, "Come, follow me"?

There will be an End!

This much is true: There is an End; just as there was a Beginning. Jesus said, "I will be with you until the end of the age." Simon Peter, His disciple, asserted confidently: "The end of all things is near." Paul the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians: "Then the end will come, when Christ hands over the kingdom to God the Father."

These statements give us a starting point. They help us understand that just as there was a beginning, there will be an End. At one place we read: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." At another place: "And I saw a new heavens and a new earth."

Between these two points, between the start and the finish, there was the turning point. The Bible calls it "the fullness of time." It is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God launched this historical sequence; God will bring it to a conclusion. The decisive, divine act leading from one to the other is the Christ event; we also call it the Incarnation, the Passion or the Resurrection. "In Christ, God was reconciling the world unto himself." It was the pivot upon which the narrative of history turns, the fulcrum by which God moves the world. This is what we mean by history: moving from point A to point B to point C. It is a linear view of world affairs. It organizes and interprets the world as a movement, a straight line movement: in the beginning; in the fullness of time; then the End.

Not all agree with this. It was a novel idea when it was first proposed by the Hebrew prophets. The ancient world, and indeed much of our world today, organized things in a cycle. They took nature as the key: the constant coming and going of the seasons; the cycle of life: birth, growth, maturity, death. They worshiped nature; they made idols of the fertility goddesses; everything comes and goes and comes again. Reincarnation is an old expression of this idea that has once again become popular: everything is recycled.