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[AlphaT]

I just had this question pop into my head and thought that this would be a good place to ask it.

So I was listening to this podcast about space travel and colonization of other planets, and I was wondering about The End Times.

How do the events in Revelation relate to people on The Moon, or perhaps, Mars or other planets depending on when the end comes? All the events focus around this planet, and the biblical writers certainly did not have a knowledge about space travel, so from a modern point of view how do you think the end will apply to humans not on Earth?

[jimwalton]

Wow. Great question. As far as prophecies about the end times, two things are clear:

1. The prophets wrote from the perspective of their locale. You'll notice that everything centers in the Middle East. (As far as anyone can tell, there isn't even mention of or reference to America, or the western hemisphere.)

2. The perspective of the Bible is that the prophets weren't just having fanciful visions or inventing cool (or not so cool) ideas, but they were receiving these messages from God.

Well, many would contend that, in our present awareness of the whole globe and the alliances between countries all over the globe, it's just not possible at this point that the countries of the western hemisphere will somehow be involved in the events of the end times. We just don't know how. The prophecies are deliberately generalized and obscure. Just for a fun example, let's turn to Ezekiel 38, a prophecy against Gog. There's a lot of disagreement about who "Gog" might be. Most people think Gog, Magog, Meshek and Tubal refer to people groups in western Turkey. Then Ezekiel mentions Persia, Cush, Put, and Gomer. It sounds like a local skirmish, and yet we know that often in the Bible Babylon means more than just Babylon, "Rome" more than just Rome, and "Sodom" more than just Sodom. The debates never go away about who is being referred to, is it literal or symbolic, and how we're to understand such things. (Prophecy is a difficult subject area.) Then a great horde will come from the far north (Ezk. 38.15). The prophet uses apocalyptic symbolism (not literal, v. 20) to talk about the severity of the event. So nobody knows how this will come about. Hopefully we'll understand when we see it happening, but beforehand it's not able to be sorted out. Remember that when Jesus came the first time it was a total mystery, too. When we look back at the prophecies we can make sense of it, but looking forward to them they couldn't.

So to your question directly: How do the events of Revelation relate to people who are not on the earth at the time? Your question assumes a sequence of possibilities: (1) "The End" is far enough away that we will have time to populate other planets, (2) Possibly there is already life elsewhere in the universe, (3) or we will actually have the technology and the will to populate other planets, and we'll do it.

In answer I would say several things:

1. The prophecies of Revelation have many elements to them that are universal in scope ("stars falling from the heavens" kind of language). If there are populations of humans on other planets, the judgment will come to all humanity, regardless of location.

2. Remember that with the sin of Adam and Eve, all creation "fell"—not just the earth, and not just human life. The perspective of the Bible is universal, not merely geocentric.

3. Creation in Genesis 1 is written from a geocentric point of view, but that doesn't require that creation only took place here. The apocalypse of Revelation, Daniel, and Ezekiel are also written from a geocentric point of view, that that won't necessitate that the end of history will be an "earth only" event.

4. It's entirely and realistically possible that humanity will focus harder on destroying each other than cooperating together to establish colonies elsewhere. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money, in this case, on man's cruelty more than on his nobility.

Feel free to talk to me more.