Over the years, many people have speculated about the end of the world and the end of time. Will there be a great war? A great earthquake? Will there be a sudden rapture where the faithful suddenly vanish as Hal Lindsay once predicted in The Late Great Planet Earth? Will it be as Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye describe in their best-selling Left Behind series? Would the end come in 2011 as American broadcaster Harold Camping predicted? We know now that he was wrong. Would the end come in 2012 as some interpreted the Mayan calendar? Again, that prediction failed. Will the end come later this year, or perhaps in 22 billion years as some scientists predict?

Even Jesus' first disciples wanted to know. One day as they were leaving the temple, one of them remarked on the great stones of the templ…