THE position of science is diametrically opposed to that of religion on the origin of mankind. While science posits that man is a product of a lengthy process of evolution, religion maintains that man is a creation of God. The two are, however, not poles apart on every issue. The Christian religious belief that the world will come to an end appreciably concurs with the postulation of scientists that the earth will eventually cease to exist. The second session of the 23rd synod of the Ibadan Anglican Diocese held at the All Souls’ Church, Bodija from April 8 – 11, 2021 provided a platform for an exhaustive treatment of the Christian and scientific perspectives on the interesting subject. The Diocesan, The Most Revd. Joseph Akinfenwa, in his Bishop’s Charge at the synod juxtaposed the scientific with the religious viewpoints. He quoted copiously from an article written by an astrophysicist, Ethan Siegel, and published in the Forbes Magazine on September 27, 2017. In the article entitled ‘’The Four Ways the Earth will Actually End’’, Siegel postulates that it is inevitable that humans will go extinct on earth. He says that human beings have been around for a cosmic ‘’blink-of-an-eye’’ –under half a million years. Basing his argument on how evolution works, the scientist predicts that it is quite unlikely that there will be any humans left a few million years from now whether an out-of-this world catastrophe like an asteroid strike occurs or not.
The second prediction is that there will be the boiling of the earth’s oceans. The sun will, over time, heat up and expand and the amount of energy hitting the earth’s oceans will be sufficient to boil them making the planet inhospitable to life. After approximately five to seven billion years more, the sun will exhaust the hydrogen in its core, the interior will contract and heat up. It will swell, vaporise the earth’s atmosphere and char whatever is left of the earth’s surface. The third postulation is that the earth shall be reduced to a barren rock. After the boiling of the oceans everything that ever lived on the earth’s surface will be reduced to charred ash and everything that living creatures left behind will be turned into dust. After the sun has run out of hydrogen, it will begin to release more energy than before and turn into a red giant that nothing on earth can withstand. The sun itself will later die and be reduced to a white dwarf while the earth becomes a roasted remnant floating in its orbit around a stellar corpse.
The fourth and final stage of the four ways is that the earth will be swallowed up or ejected from its orbit. Siegel says that after going through the previous stages, the earth will remain intact until one of the following things happens to it. (1) An object collides with it and either destroys or engulfs it depending on the size and speed of the object. or (2) a massive object passes close to the earth gravitationally ejecting it from the solar system and the galaxy, leaving it to wander in obscurity throughout the empty cosmos for eternity or (3) it remains bound to the sun’s corpse and gets swallowed by it. On the Christian perspective on how and when the world will come to an end, Bishop Akinfenwa made references to what the Bible teaches about the last things, the end times or final events. He recalled what Jesus Christ said would serve as the signals of the beginning of the last days. Among these are the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, persecution, wars and rumours of wars, nations against nations, kingdoms against kingdoms, tribulation, famines and earthquakes in various places and the emergence of false Christs who would come and mislead many. The Bishop went further to address the questions: How exactly will the world end? What will happen at the end of the age? What shall be the sequence of events? What shall be the final stage of the sequence of events? He proceeded to answer the questions as foretold in the Bible – the coming of Christ is not only soon but imminent and could happen any moment; it will be visible, audible, instantaneous and worldwide; the resurrection of the righteous will occur and the saved who are alive at Christ’s coming will be caught up in the clouds together with the resurrected to meet the Lord in the air.
It is thus apparent that both science and Christianity agree that the world will come to an end. The difference lies in how and when it will happen. The scientist foresees the annihilation of all living things on the surface of the earth. The prediction is that the earth itself will disappear and wander in an empty cosmos after it had been ejected from its orbit or end up in bits and pieces after collision with an object. Another possibility is that it will be swallowed by the corpse of a dead sun. For the Christian, the end of the world is tied to Christ’s second coming. While science has a timescale for the end of the world – though not specific – no one can tell when the return of Christ will be. The belief is that it will happen soon. Apart from what has been foretold or predicted, there is the present and potent danger humanity poses to itself in a world in which the existing stockpile of weapons of mass destruction can wipe out the human race many times over.
- Olatoye, a veteran journalist, lives in Ibadan
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