Elon Musk might not be the most famous man in the world, but he is currently the richest—with assets worth an estimated $255 billion. As a tech guru and entrepreneur, he is the founder of SpaceX, which regularly sends rockets into orbit. And along with his famous Tesla auto manufacturing business, a solar energy company, and a tunnel-building enterprise, he also helped create Neuralink, a company seeking to integrate artificial intelligence with the human brain.
No question, Musk is one of the most influential voices in world culture. In 2021, he was named Person of the Year by TIME magazine. When Musk speaks, people listen. He has about 104 million followers on Twitter alone, and at times his tweets cause a significant stir.
The End of Civilization?
In particular, recent tweets by Musk have been warning about a trend that could lead to the collapse of civilization, even the extinction of the human race. Is he worried about global warming? Nuclear war? A new pandemic?
None of the above.
Instead, he warned about the world’s population. And, no, it’s not about over-population, as scientists have repeatedly been warning about over the past several decades, a crisis they say would lead to starvation and fresh-water scarcity. No, Musk is worried about under-population—a lack of people—which he says could be apocalyptic.
“Population collapse,” he said, “due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.” He says that one way to solve the problem is for people to start having more kids. Having had ten kids, it seems he’s doing his part.
Musk has also warned about another threat: a giant asteroid hitting the earth and wiping us all out. He linked to a British Broadcasting Company (BBC) article that discussed the popular theory that an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs; if another one were to hit the earth, he believes, it could also be an extinction-level event. “This will happen again,” he tweeted, “—just a matter of time.”
Earlier, Musk warned about our expanding sun: “Eventually the Sun is going to expand and engulf Earth. It will expand and incinerate Earth. It is for sure going to happen—but not any time soon.” It’s not supposed to happen for seven billion years, so there’s no need to panic just yet.
The Bible and the End
So far, all the predictions about the end of the world, those which have given dates, and there have been many, have been wrong—so maybe we shouldn’t be too concerned about Musk’s apocalyptic predictions.
After all, we were supposed to have been wiped out by several things by now. For instance, many feared that the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest atom smasher, located in France and Switzerland, would create a black hole that would swallow up the earth. That hasn’t happened, obviously.
At the same time, the Bible is clear that, yes, one day this sin-filled world is going to end: “The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10).
Elements melting with fervent heat? Heaven passing away? Earth and all its works burning up? That sounds a lot worse than what Musk is predicting! The Bible clearly says that everything about this old world of ours is going to be destroyed.
The End Is Not the End
There is, however, a big difference between what the Bible predicts about the future and what Musk has been warning us about.
The Bible says that the end of this world is really the beginning of something else: the creation of a new one! That verse above about the earth and everything in it burning up is followed by this promise: “Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).
A new heavens and new earth? This promise is given several times in God’s Word: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind” (Isaiah 65:17). And here: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Revelation 21:1).
The news gets even better. After all, who would want to go through all the pain and suffering that we have experienced under this heaven and on this earth? No one—and we won’t have to either, for we have been promised, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Pain, death, sorrow—these “former things” will be gone forever. How? Why? These promises of a new heaven and new earth will be fulfilled only because of what Jesus Christ did for us at the cross, through the plan of salvation. To learn more about what we have been promised in eternity as a result of the grace of Jesus, check out “5 Reasons Heaven Won’t Be Boring.”
Elon Musk may be a tech guru, but he still has much to learn about how this world will actually end and, even more important, what will replace it.