Hope in Jesus’ Return
Pastor Mark Krieg | Christ Community Church | November 2026
“Let Your kingdom come and let Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” — Matthew 6:10
If you grew up in the church, there’s a good chance your picture of the end times looks something like this: the world spiraling into darkness, an antichrist rising to power, and believers hanging on by a thread until the rapture pulls them out just before everything falls apart. It’s a view that has shaped Christian culture for nearly two centuries — but it isn’t the only view, and it may not be the most biblically grounded one.
Before about 200 years ago, the church held a largely optimistic view of the end times. Something shifted in the early 19th century, and understanding what shifted — and why — matters more than most people realize.
How We Got Here
The study of end times is called eschatology, and the church’s view of it has changed significantly across the centuries. The early church, the church of the Middle Ages, and the Reformers all held largely optimistic views of what God was doing in the world and where history was headed. That began to change in the 1820s, when a British Bible teacher named John Nelson Darby developed what became known as pre-tribulation rapture theology — a framework in which the world is essentially going to hell and believers will be rescued out just before it hits its worst. Darby’s framework was popularized in the 1930s, spread widely through the Scofield Reference Bible, and carried forward by figures like D.L. Moody, Hal Lindsey, and John Hagee. It remains the dominant framework in many American evangelical circles today.
This isn’t to say those teachers were without value or that every piece of this theology is wrong. But it is worth asking: is this framework as biblically grounded as we’ve assumed? And is it shaping us toward fear or toward faith?
Is the World Actually Getting Worse?
The pessimistic view of the end times rests heavily on the assumption that the world is getting worse — that history is a downward spiral headed toward inevitable catastrophe. But the historical data tells a more complicated story.
Over the past 2,000 years, the proportion of people dying from war and violent conflict has declined dramatically. Infant mortality has dropped by 90–95% over the last millennium. Human life expectancy has risen substantially. Smallpox, one of history’s most devastating diseases, was globally eradicated in 1980. Literacy rates have gone from roughly 1 in 10 adults in 1820 to 87% today. Legal chattel slavery has been abolished in every nation on earth. The global economy, international diplomacy, medicine, science, and communication have all expanded in ways that would have been unimaginable to previous generations.
None of this means the world is perfect or that darkness doesn’t exist. But the evidence doesn’t support the claim that things are simply getting worse. The more honest question might be: is the earth going to hell, or is heaven returning to earth?
What the Bible Actually Says
Romans 8:19–21 paints a picture most Christians haven’t spent much time with. Creation itself — not just humanity — is waiting with eager expectation to be set free from its bondage to decay. The redemption Christ won wasn’t only for human souls. It was for all things.
And Jesus’ most frequent teaching topic wasn’t the rapture or the tribulation. It was the Kingdom of God. The phrase appears 126 times across the four Gospels. Thirty of His parables are about the Kingdom. Luke 19:13 records Jesus telling His servants to “do business until I return.” Luke 22:29 records Him assigning His followers a kingdom, the same way His Father assigned one to Him. The picture isn’t one of believers retreating from a crumbling world — it’s one of believers actively extending the reign of heaven on earth until He comes back.
Our Mandate
Heaven comes to earth the way it always has — through people who are connected to the Father and filled with His Spirit. Jesus taught us to pray for it. He modeled it in His own life. And He commissioned us to carry it forward: healing the sick, proclaiming good news, casting out what doesn’t belong, and leaving His peace wherever we go.
The end of the story isn’t that we lose. It’s that we win. And the Kingdom of Heaven has been expanding on the earth for 2,000 years — not retreating.
That’s not a reason for arrogance. It’s a reason for hope. And hope, not fear, is what we were always meant to be motivated by.
