End Times

Oversimplified

• The Christian hope of Christ's return, the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, and the renewal of all creation.
• Orthodoxy reads eschatology soberly and liturgically, not as a timetable to decode but as the fulfillment already tasted in the Eucharist.

Summary

The "last things" (eschata) center on the second coming of Christ "in glory to judge the living and the dead," the general resurrection, the final judgment, and "a new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation 21.1). The Creed confesses "I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come."[^1]

Already and not yet

The Kingdom is both future and already present: in the Liturgy the Church stands at the end of the ages and communes now in the life to come. Orthodoxy avoids date-setting and elaborate speculative schemes (e.g., rapture systems), reading Revelation chiefly as worship and the victory of the Lamb.[^2] See AntiChrist, Hell, Bodily Resurrection.

[^1]: The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. [^2]: The Fathers read the eschaton with sobriety, avoiding date-setting and speculative schemes.