NOTES for Mat 24:36

Perhaps, the most important thing the Holy Scripture tells us about the end of the world is that it will finally come. The Lord tells the followers in a well detailed way that the end of the world will be similar to the harvest, when the creation will bring to the creator its fruit. But it is very important to mention that Jesus says after that no one knows the hour when our Lord will come. Further, God will speak about this again more explicitly after the Resurrection: it is not your business to know the hour and the deadlines, which the Lord put in His authority. So it is necessary to know that the end of the world will come (as the Lord Himself speaks about it), but we shouldn’t know the hour of its advent. The Lord tells us besides in the parable to always be ready for this day.

Ancient Christians waited from day to day the advent of the end of the world, this expectation on one hand animated them and gave the strength to withstand the persecutions and temptations; but on the other hand, after the 2-3rd century this wait expectation turned out to be a reason for a certain embarrassment, disappointment and new conceptualization of the Gospel. We have forgotten nowadays the forthcoming end of the world, in such a way that the hour and the signs of its advent worry us more than what we shall say on the last judgment.

Probably, the matter is that the knowledge of the end time is necessary for us not to define our actions and acts. It is necessary to live in God's truth all the time: at the day after the creation of the world and at the day before its end. We rather need the forthcoming completion of the world’s history for a right relation with this world and the realities of our life. Heavens will decay as a defame dress, and, the evil and suffering, the violence and lie that we have in the oeuvre will stop with them. It is at the same time the Day of Judgment and the day of hope. We shall see Jesus Christ and shall see His creation in all its beauty imagined by Him. In comparison with all this, the multitude of dependences and illusions that invade our conscience and which we ought to part with pales into insignificance.