The End of the World

Bishop Caussé recounted an experience in this month’s Ensign in which someone asked him unexpectedly, “Do you believe in the end of the world?”  Part of our doctrine is indeed that there will be an end of the world, or at least the world as we know it.  Jesus alluded to this when He said in a final charge to His apostles: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20).  In one of His parables He also referred to it: “Therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world” (Matt. 13:40).  One of the questions that elicited the great discourse on the Mount of Olives was “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (Matt. 24:3).  Nephi also referred to the end when he told us that the angel explained that John would “write concerning the end of the world” (1 Nephi 14:22).  As we celebrate at Christmastime the first coming of the Savior, we also look forward to the promised second coming which will mark the end of this world and usher in a new beginning: “And the end shall come, and the heaven and the earth shall be consumed and pass away, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth” (D&C 29:23).

                Bishop Caussé suggested four ways that we can prepare for the Second Coming.  The last on his list was to help others: “A wonderful way to prepare a place for the Lord is to help our neighbors who don’t have a home.”  He encouraged us to “be a people always prepared to reach out to the homeless and the destitute.”  Surely there are few things we could do to better prepare for welcoming the Savior back to the earth than to help those who, like Him, “hath not where to lay his head” (Luke 9:58).  I wonder if we can’t see the parable of the talents as a metaphor for what will happen when the Savior does come back.  In the account a man had traveled to a “far country” and was gone a “long time.”  He gave “talents” to three servants before He left, and then when he finally returned we read that he “reckoneth with them.”  Likewise for us the Savior has left to a “far country” but will one day return to “reckon” with each of us to see how we have lived our lives.  And he will certainly want to know how we have used our talents and means to help others.  The parable at face value seems to be about using money to gain more money, but I wonder if we can’t see the actions of the servant who had only one talent and subsequently buried it in the earth as representative of those of us today who never use our means to help others.  They symbolically bury their talent because we use it only for ourselves.  Surely if we have not sought to succor others it will be a difficult conversation that day at the end of the world when the Savior wants the reckoning of our lives.