As I was saying, profuse apologies to my erstwhile boss and celebrated columnist, Allah-De, of blessed memory…Any talk about the world coming to an end can’t but send cold shivers down our spine. When there is a prophecy believed to be authoritative, there is frenzy; there is anxiety in several parts of the world. As pointed out last week, two dates were given for the Armageddon: 28 October 1992 and 14 August 2116. The prediction for 1992 passed and the world did not end. This would suggest that mankind was given a reprieve and the day of destiny had been shifted by 124 years. As of today the countdown is 94 years away. Many a man will certainly heave a sigh of relief that given the mean lifespan of human beings he will not be around to be blown up in widespread blasts and eruptions of the earth, with attendant high-rise buildings coming down and tsunami and ocean waters upturning and sweeping those in coastal areas, man and property away into the depths. And since he is not likely to live for 94 years more on earth, he would have the Grace of passing away peacefully in his sleep. He would have the time to prepare his will and direct his relations to publish his obituary in selected national newspapers: Gratitude for a life well spent, Zion triumphant or the enemies have done their worst! As I reminded us last week, the countdown 1992 was predicted by a Korean priest, who had said that the world would come to an end by 4 p.m. on 28 October, 1992. Presaging that was the prophecy that the doomsday was unfailingly going to be 31 December 999 A. D.

The experiences that the Day of Judgment is nigh have always been the same: Fright, anxiety, prayers and fasting, and making of confessions to the clergy, sharing out or sale of property, sudden good neighbourliness, granting of pardon to the aggrieved. What I did not read about when the prediction of the end in 1992 failed was the release of prisoners as was the case in A.D. 999 as contained in Historian Frederick H. Martens’ graphic rendition in his book, The Story of Human Life; It is an account of what happened on the night of 31 December 999 A.D.

Events such as the end of the world which strike alarm and terror into our hearts and cold shivers down our spine often prove how good human beings could be if they choose to exhibit their true nature. By virtue of the nature of its spiritual origin, the animating core of every man is good. Wrongdoing is a perversion of the true nature of every man. Thus, to be evil is not natural with man. It requires effort to be evil. Think of lie-telling. It requires effort to lie, and it requires greater effort still to sustain it so as not to be found out whereas to tell the truth does not require any thinking. But the perversion has gone on for thousands of years, deepened, reinforced and pervasive, that the true nature is blurred if not buried and is hardly remembered. Such is it that everywhere today there is talk of man’s inhumanity to man; committing evil is regarded as the new normal, otherwise, how do we explain the unrelenting and widespread mindless killings, kidnapping and violation of the dignity of women in parts of our country!

With a prophecy of Armageddon man suddenly becomes aware of his helplessness, that, after all, he is a dependent entity. He becomes pious; he becomes loving, understanding and caring. He subordinates his cocky and all-knowing intellect which he has permitted to mislead him all his sojourn in this part of the world to his true nature—simple and humble. Possibly conscious of 28 October, 1992, scientists embarked upon all manner of strategies to fend off the prophesied end of the world. They were then working on the theory that a Comet called Swift Tuttle, coming with ice and dust, would bring about the end of the world. Swift Tuttle, it was reckoned, would hit the earth with an impact force of 20 million mega-tonnes or about 1.6 million times the force of the bomb unleashed on Hiroshima. Swift Tuttle, said to be between three or six miles wide in size, was travelling at 130, 000 miles per hour. Scientists were to look into the possibility of blasting the Comet out of the sky or divert its course by firing its body. Human beings! Puny human beings!! Hardly is it realised by many people that were the end of the world to occur and they escaped its dreaded horror, the Ethereal World, the Beyond, which is a transitional dwelling place for the earthly departed, will not be spared. We learn in higher knowledge spreading in these times that since this earth is dependent on the Ethereal World, it follows that whatever happens to the earth also reacts on the Ethereal World.

The world did not come to an end as predicted by the Korean, Ha bank-ik. Many end-time believers were left shaken in their faith and wondering about when the end will really come. Olubunmi Cardinal Okogie or Bishop Matthew Kukah and Co., I am sure, could not have been perturbed. At no time did they ever conceive the end-time like a predictable eclipse. After all, I can almost hear the Bishop of Sokoto say, wasn’t it said already that not even the Angels in Heaven are permitted such confidentiality? Or since when did the coming of the Son of Man lose its surprise element? Indeed, it would appear as far as Pastor Enoch Adeboye is concerned, we can carry on with our lives. Speaking at Holy Ghost Rally in Port Harcourt at the weekend, Pastor Adeboye predicted that this year, 2022 is special and it holds enough goodies for the faithful. World Religion online publication quotes him as saying: “This is a year that is different from other years. The last time there was a year like this was 1,011 years ago. The next time we are going to have a year like this is 911 years from now. This is a year you see once in your lifetime.” He went on: “There is nothing you will ask from God that He will consider too big. We are dealing with a God Who is more than sufficient. So make good use of this year unless you want to wait for another 911 years.”

This is hint that even beyond the next 94 years left of the old prediction that the world would end on 14 August 2116, there is the hope that man should keep calm—the world has 911 years more, if at all Armageddon would come knocking. However, the age-old question lingers: Will the world end some day or not? Or is belief in the world with an end mere theosophical speculation?

Let me hasten to straighten some issues. First, the world will not come to an end. But an end will definitely come to every material form in the world, including the vast world of matter, a tiny speck of which is our dear earth. Put in another way, an End-Time awaits everything! Is there anything that has a beginning that does not have an end? The Natural Law of Cycle stipulates that the end will always go back to the beginning. A great many defines the world as only the earth. Beyond the earth, he thinks of Paradise, the intervening planes and Realms between the earth and Paradise he has no knowledge of, yet he is familiar with the Lord Jesus Christ’s affirmation that in His Father’s House are many mansions. The House refers to Creation and Mansions to Realms which are inconceivable and incomprehensible in their vastness and which exist in the Creation of His Father. Take our earth, for example. The earth is only a planet around the sun. The sun itself is only one of billions of stars in our galaxy known as Milky Way. The Milky Way in turn is one of galaxies in our Universe called Ephesus. And as the Book of Revelations tells us, there are seven universes. They are listed as Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. (Rev 1:9). They are at the outermost boundary of Creation, mind blowing and inconceivable as their vastness is, yet they constitute a small part of the World of Gross Matter. I cannot now begin to go into details about other Realms of Creation which constitute the original Creation and the World of Gross Matter even making up only a part of what is termed Subsequent Creation which the Yoruba, in their recognition, call “Asehinda Aiye” as I once pointed out.

By the world, therefore, I mean Creation, that is, both the upper and perfect, unchangeable created part and the lower-lying imperfect sections, imperfect simply because they did not issue directly from Perfection, from the Hand of the Almighty Creator, but have developed after the image of the perfect. By material form, I mean covering, that is, forms derived from matter the lowest-lying portion of the world. The picture is thus given of bodies not of matter descending into matter. This is for a purpose since there is no accident in Creation. Man certainly is not an accident! The purpose of this union lies in the Law of Development which compels every species to go on developing itself. Like a seed, mango for example, sunk into the soil to germinate, sprout and develop to its utmost potential, man has been placed in the world of matter as the soil in which he is to awaken and develop his potentials. Are we not told …the sower went out to sow?

Man is not his body which is matter. His language has already taught him that his head or kidney, like his coat, or even his car is not he. Thus, the forms which matter gives to the body of man and to the earth, his material home, are not eternal; they have a beginning and must have an end. The cycle of the beginning flowing into an end and the end going back to the beginning is observable everywhere, and in everything. Take our breath. The air inhaled must return to whence it came through exhalation. The blood for as long as we are on our feet must return to whence it came—the heart. Water evaporated must return as rain. Man is born; he also dies.

Matter on its own is lifeless, dead. It is permeated by a living force to live. When man the living force in his body, casts aside his cloak, we say he is dead or, if we are better advised, that he has passed on. He returns, though in another material form, if he has not developed his potentials well enough to earn him the right to higher realms of existence in the vast school of life. He must go on developing himself. Meanwhile, the material body he casts aside decomposes to be renewed through transformation which has the object of purifying and refreshing it for a new beginning in some other use.

Man, who descended into the material world as a spiritual seed, is expected to have matured and extricated himself from that world, like the fruit from the plant before any part there that is his abode has attained old age. The earth as a form of matter, as earlier stated, is subject to the Law of Development under the compulsion of which everything that comes into being germinates, sprouts, flowers, matures, ages and passes away, and returns to primeval state to be transformed, purified, and refreshed for a new beginning. In the case of planets such as our earth, this is the “Final” or Last” Judgment to be found in many religious teachings in varying forms, little understood and therefore always given ambiguous interpretations. The distinction need to be made, however, between decomposition which brings the small cycle of a material form to a close and disintegration which puts an end to the vast world of matter, and leads away from the material condition, to the primeval state, transforming matter into radiation, or the withdrawal of the spiritual, the life force, from dying celestial bodies! The consequence, indeed, the end result for the human spirit not already home but still trapped in the material world is spiritual death, that death which has been appointed to come to man but once, the equivalent of the effacement of a man’s name from the “Book of Life.”

Does science validate this conception of the “End-Time” or “Final Judgment” for each celestial body? It does. Hoimar v. Ditfurth says, for example in his book, “Children of the Universe” that: “The stars which we see in the heavens are not only at different distances from us and of different ages, but they also belong to different successive generations. It took us a long time to recognise this. “A New Approach” magazine quotes him as saying: “Today, it is as good as certain that…the stars also go through development, a regular one, according to the very exact laws of elapsing biography.”

What I am getting at is that our planet Earth will not come to an end now, although it has reached the stage of over ripeness. And like any fruit which has to drop off its mother tree, stripped of its cover in the process of decay to start a new life, the earth at disintegration returns to its primeval seed, with only radiations albeit weakened radiations, remaining to start a new cycle. A new earth comes into being. As of now the earth has been helped through Light Anchorage to lift it and divert its course away from the funnel of disintegration. The world coming to an end will not happen in the earthly, intellectual calculations of time. What man will experience and, of course, is already is the End-Time which is the End of the Time allotted to mankind on earth to complete their development and training in the spiritual school that the earth is. At the end of the school training there is the final examination. The final examination is already being faced by human beings on earth today—the World Judgment has begun although it is at its beginning. World events around us manifest this Great Purification—planes crashes, earthquakes, tremors, floods, fires, economic collapse, and political instability; man reasoning upside down; famine, strange and intractable diseases, collapse of systems. Our world cannot be the same again. The world is learning to live with COVID-19 and its variants. Protocols are being relaxed. Face masks are being thrown out of the window. The purification is going round the whole world, reaching each country, each people, each person at his own time. All houses, after all, were not built on the same day. One falls, the other stands—until its own time comes.

After purification, the Millennium will be ushered in, the famed 1,000 years of peace on earth during which only those who have survived the judgment stand and only the Will of the Creator will rule all the worlds—all swinging in His Will as it is done in higher realms. Those who do not pass the examination will be swept off the face of the earth, suddenly and devastatingly, through catastrophes, wars, famine, terrible illness, into eternal damnation. Right now, it is either or, for every human being on the face of the earth—no matter who he may be—salvation or damnation.

From the foregoing, it can be seen that the world is not coming to an end now, although the prophets may not be altogether wrong about it, it is clarity their statements call for in the Ray of Truth available on the face of the earth today for those who yearn and supplicate the Almighty Creator in humility, for it. It is the Light of Truth which illumines all subjects and answers all questions of life and existence without exception.

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The world coming to an end will not happen in the earthly, intellectual calculations of time. What man will experience and, of course, is already is the End-Time which is the End of the Time allotted to mankind on earth to complete their development and training in the spiritual school that the earth is. At the end of the school training there is the final examination.