The headline on the poster in the college hallway read: “Will you be living in the year 2100?” It invited suggestions for items to be placed in a college time capsule to be opened in January 2100. Students were encouraged to make these recommendations because, “due to advances in medical science,” they might expect to still be living at the planned opening of the capsule in 100 years!
How subtly does Satan seek to lull souls into thinking that life stretches endlessly before them! Thus blinded, man little realizes or cares that his history, begun 6000 years ago, started with God’s invitation to eat of the tree of life and live forever (Gen. 2:16-17; 3:22). Instead, having willingly disobeyed God, he brought ruin and death into that beautiful and pristine scene of innocence (Rom. 5:12).
The reality is that few if any of these students living today will still be alive in this world in January 2100. Of course, they will consciously exist somewhere—either alive in the presence of Christ (2 Cor. 5:8) or in hopeless, eternal separation from the God of light and love who created them (Matt. 7:23).
Let’s consider three distinct parts to this question, doing so in light of the truth of the Word of God.
“Will You Be Living . . . ?”
Living and dying. The Word of God is the very truth which Pilate could not discover when he asked the Lord Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). It plainly states that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), that “death [has] passed upon all men” (Rom. 5:12), and that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Divine truth reveals that death is the final end of every soul (apart from the sovereign grace of God—Eph. 2:5, 8; Rom. 5:17). The life of every unsaved person who read that poster—yea, in the world—ends in death.
Further, Satan seeks to hide the divine truth that all are “dead” (no life before God), even while they live. Be he in the best of health and vigor, unregenerate man is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1) and is pictured morally in the man of Luke 10 who was left “half dead” by those who had robbed him. This is the true moral condition of all mankind—physically alive yet morally dead before God.
God warned the first man and woman, “In the day that thou eatest thereof . . . dying thou shalt die” (Gen. 2:17 JND; see footnote). From the moment an infant—born with Adam’s fallen nature—takes its first breath, it begins to die. And were it to live 100 years or more, the truth still remains—its life is marked by dying.
Eternal torment. In Luke 16:23 another solemn truth about life and death is recorded. Here we read of a man who, though having ceased living in this world, still exists. But what a tragic existence he experiences! “I am tormented in this flame” are the awful words spoken from his own parched lips. Oh dear reader! If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Saviour, consider what it means to leave this world that way. You will still consciously exist, in January 2100 and forever, in a hopeless eternity of torment and weeping, separated from the God who loved and created you (Matt. 8:12).
Eternal life. Yet, illuminating this somber, grim side of divine truth is wonderful, glorious hope, summed up in Romans 6:23: “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The assurance of this life is given in 1 John 5:13: “That ye may know that ye have eternal life.” We are also given to know that when done living in this world, believers go to “be with Christ; which is far better” (Phil. 1:23).
Eternal life is infinitely more than the endless life in innocence that Adam had before he sinned. The Good Shepherd came that we “might have life, and that [we] might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). What an abundant gift is the life of Christ who is eternal life (John 11:25; 14:6; 17:3). It can’t be lost, for He promises, “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish” (John 10:28), and “because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19).
“Will You Be Living in the Year . . . ”?
What “future” really means. The enemy always suggests that this life holds the promise of a future—that there is always time for living. Satan falsely speaks in the language of years while God speaks in the language of now. The truth makes no promise of the future (as to this life)—whether in days or years. There is a sober question in James 4:14: “For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” Man is also warned that “now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). The lie of promised years and future for the unbeliever is solemnly unmasked by God’s rebuke in Luke 12:20: “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.”
The believer’s future. For Christians, days, months or years must be understood in reference to the promised return of the Lord Jesus—first for His bride the church (1 Thess. 4) and then to appear in this world (Acts 1:11). His words, “Surely I come quickly,” give a divine answer to the world’s scoffing spirit, which asks, “Where is the promise of His coming?” We can become tainted by this spirit of unbelief so that the expectation of the Lord’s imminent return fades, and we begin to act morally as the wicked servant of Luke 12:45.
No prophetic event remains to be fulfilled before Christ’s promised return. Let us regulate every thought of the future—years or days—by a daily living in the spirit of the patience of Jesus Christ (Rev. 1:9), awaiting His shout (1 Thess. 4:13-18).
“Will You Be Living in the Year 2100?”
We don’t know. Believers are not to try and anticipate or determine the date of the Lord’s return for the church or His appearing in this world. It is not ours to “know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power” (Acts 1:7).
But presently occurring “famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes” (Matt. 24:7), “wars and rumors of wars” (Mark 13:7), “the love of many [becoming] cold” (Matt. 24:12), and “the earth . . . corrupt before God . . . and . . . filled with violence” (Gen. 6:11) all provide stark evidence that the Lord’s return (the rapture) and subsequent appearing (Col. 3:4) is at hand. Six thousand years of man’s sad history has passed and we stand at the beginning of the seventh millennium—the seventh day (2 Peter 3:8). It ought to be exceedingly precious and comforting for believers longing for Christ’s return to remember that “God . . . rested on the seventh day” (Gen. 2:2). As we enter the seventh day of man’s history on this earth, can the promised coming of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ be far off?
We do know. January 2100 will come. When it does, the world will be experiencing one of three things: (1) God’s grace still offering salvation to the lost, (2) seven years of the most solemn, frightful judgments this world has ever known, or (3) a thousand years of blessed peace, rest and joy. Personally, it seems very probable—in view of the present dark conditions of the world—that January 2100 will be part of the thousand years of the glorious millennial reign of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But whatever the condition of the world in 2100, Christians living now are awaiting—not the unveiling of a time capsule in January 2100—but the glorious rapture (1 Thess. 4:13-18). It will take place in the “twinkling of an eye,” and “we shall . . . be changed.” Then “this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and . . . immortality” and “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:51-54). “Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).
Ed.