What do Christians believe about the end of the world?
Nearly all Christians are taught that Jesus Christ will return in glory and reign eternally. But beliefs differ about how this will happen. Many Catholics, liberal Protestants, and Orthodox Christians in the U.S. do not emphasize the end of the world. Though their denominations have end-times theologies, these Christians would rarely hear preaching on it. These denominations focus on Jesus’ words that people cannot “know the day or the hour” (Matthew 25) of the end and tend not to speculate on the details. A majority of evangelical Protestants, however, stress specific ideas about the end of the world. They believe that certain events must happen prior to Jesus’ return, and that many of these events are happening now. Drawing from Matthew 24, Paul’s epistles, and the Book of Revelation, evangelicals look for signs of the end of the world. Some evangelical Christians in the U.S. believe in a more specific End Times scenario called the Rapture.
