Can The World Get Worse?

Some Christians, seeing the horrors of the modern age, seem to hold the attitude that the world is a worse place now than it ever has been in human history, and that the end times are correspondingly near.

Those who hold this position vastly underestimate the human capacity for sin and evil. The world has been, could be, and will be a much worse place for Christians than it is presently.

This is not to gloss over the serious problems Christians face in the modern era. The culture of death is rampant in the West; abortion, gay marriage, aggressive materialism, and other evils are growing in strength and intensity, and now threaten overt persecution of the Church.

In other countries, Christians are imprisoned, tortured, or even killed for their beliefs.

But Christians have overcome far worse evils in 2000 years of history. Christians were officially persecuted and often brutally tortured for the first three centuries of their existence. During the Great Western Schism, Christians weren’t even sure who was the true leader of the Church – even saints were confused as to who the true Pope was.
Faithful Christians have been forced to fight off their backs for two millenia. And the rest of the world, lacking the light of Christianity, suffered worse self-inflicted evils throughout history. Civilizations mandated nightmarish evils such as bloody human sacrifice in Mexico and ritualized suicide in Japan.

We Christians face great evils now, and will almost certainly be undergo greater trials in the years to come. But the sufferings we face hardly compare to those our forefathers in faith have suffered. Our Christians conquered the evils they faced through faith in Christ. We too can conquer them, if we trust in Christ and obey His commands.