The End!

“And they lived happily ever after. The end" is the way many children’s stories conclude. Other books, some movies, plays and narrated stories announce the end with just those words—“The end.” All physical things have a beginning and an end.

You and I had a beginning. We were conceived and born. The rest of creation that we see—all of the plants and trees and birds and bees—one day came into existence. We all had a beginning, and we will all come to our physical end.

David said in Psalm 39:4-5, “Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor.” That statement is so true.

When we are young and full of vitality, we have a very difficult time comprehending “the end of our days.” Such a thought is foreign to our thinking, as we have only just begun our lives. But when one is on the downhill side of life, we begin to understand the brevity of life, as the inevitable physical changes of aging become apparent with ever-increasing clarity.

When we read a story to our children or grandchildren, and we get to the end, we say, “The end!” We especially like the stories that say: “And they lived happily ever after,” because it implies the happiness and the life continue on and on. That is a very pleasant thought.

When we look back over the years at our life experiences, we think to ourselves: “It seems like only yesterday,” even when the remembered events occurred decades ago. Like a cloud of vapor or a puff of smoke, the time has come and gone.

We read in Ecclesiastes 7:2: “Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men; and the living will take it to heart.” As we get older, we hear of family and friends of our generation who have died. It makes us pause and consider that the clock is ticking for all of us.

If all of that sounds a bit depressing, there is something very positive we need to understand. God “…has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

We want to keep on living! We don’t want to die! We want to live forever! Some seek death to escape extreme pain and misery, but we would rather be well and keep on living. Eternity is in our hearts. And it is God who put it in our hearts for a reason.

God has a great plan and is working to complete it. He started His plan at the beginning and He will keep on working until the end, when He has finished it. Jesus Christ is “the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 1:8). Christ will return to establish His kingdom, and “Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father…” (1 Corinthians 15:24). But that “end” is a new beginning. “And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33; Isaiah 9:7).

And that is truly wonderful news because “eternity is in our hearts” and we want to live forever. It is a wonderful true story! The best story ever! It is the story of the incredible future that awaits us all. And if we will do what God says, we can all “live happily ever after” forever and ever. To discover more on this exciting subject, read our booklet, Your Ultimate Destiny!