When Will Christ Return?

Johanne Craig, a mathematician who worked in the early years of calculus, claimed in 1699 to have found the year Christ will return. I enjoyed reading about it, as the date given is something out of the ordinary.

There is a well known relationship in natural science known as the "inverse square law". Many quantities in our universe behave according to this wonderful little principal - most notably measures of force. When one desires to measure the force of, say, gravity between two objects, one simply plugs the mass of object one, m1, the mass of object two, m2, and the distance between them, R, into the following formula:

(For those who care, G is the gravitational constant)
Basically, this tells us that if the masses remain the same, but the distance between them doubles, then the overall force between them becomes one-fourth. If we bring them closer, say to half the distance, then the force quadruples. This relationship has been well known and understood by scientists since Craig's day, and it has turned out to be similar when it comes to electromagnetic force as well. As far as I'm aware, however, Johanne Craig was the only one to have applied it to Christianity.

What he did was look at historical events and their believability. If an event occurred with well-documented proof, such as eye-witnesses, then the believability of that event would be very certain. However, Craig said that as time went on, suspicions against the historical evidence would diminish. People would stop believing it given enough time - no matter how "solid" the evidence had been when the event occurred. In fact, Craig said, it followed the inverse square law - so that if you doubled the time since an event occurred, the suspicions against the historical evidence would be reduced to only one-fourth of what it had been.

With this assumption in hand, Craig attempted to calculate how long it would take for the evidence of Christianity to die out - when people would no longer believe it. He went about it two ways. He said if the evidence had been strictly oral - then all believability would die out by A.D. 800. There was, however, documentary evidence as well, so this pushed the date back to A.D. 3150. That is the date, Craig said, that no one would believe in Christ anymore.

This, he claimed, was when Christ was returning to the earth, for Christ himself said "When the son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8).

So, we have another millenium, give or take.

Now, I'm not certain how serious Craig was, but it gives you pause, doesn't it. People will laugh, thinking it is a joke, but I'm not so sure. Oh, I don't believe Craig was right by any means, but I'm pretty sure he was more correct than we give him credit for. Growing up in the evangelical church, I have had my fair share of run-ins with "The end of the world is just around the corner!" It might be, but the reasons people give for their declarations are somewhat lacking.

"Oh, because the '666' is some sort of computer chip that has already been developed, and it's only a matter of time before they use them on humans"

"Oh, because there's trouble in the middle east."

"Oh, because Nebuchadnezzar's dream, correctly interpreted by men from New York 2400 years later signals the fact that Christ began his final reign in heaven in 1914, and we've got just one more generation to go." (okay, that one's not evangelical, but I couldn't resist)

"Oh, because earthquakes are happening more in the last century than ever before."

"Oh, because the world is evil. Wars and rumours of wars are upon us."

People are obsessed with the end of the world - but the reasons for believing the end is near are very shoddy. It's only Western material thinking that makes the '666' of revelation to be something physical and tangible. There's always trouble in the middle-east. Earthquakes have always happened, and are reported with more frequency now because we have the means to detect and record them with more diligence. War has always been happening in the world, and will continue until Christ does return. Besides all this, Christ said that when these things happen, know this: it is not the end.

I'm not saying that Christ's return isn't upon us. I'm very sure I have no idea, but I do know this - it makes for a very dramatic, emotional message to get people fired up. Christ will return. No question about that. But I suspect as evangelicals we need to learn a lesson from Johanne Craig - with certainty proclaim that the end will come - but let's not make a drama out of it. Let us live our lives with certainty and purpose - knowing that although the end of the world may not be near - the end of me certainly is.