“The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph. This seems to some people intolerably frustrating. So many things would be interrupted. Perhaps you were going to get married next month, perhaps you were going to get a raise next week: you may be on the verge of a great scientific discovery; you may be maturing great social and political reforms.
Surely no good and wise God would be so very unreasonable as to cut all this short? Not now, of all moments! But we think thus because we keep assuming that we know the play. We do not know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. We do not know who are the major and who the minor characters. The Author knows.”
–C.S. Lewis, “The World’s Last Night,” in The World’s Last Night And Other Essays (New York: Harvest, 1952), 105.
