In 1516, Sir Thomas More wrote about a nation with little crime and absolutely no poverty. In this wonderful land, everyone had enough work, the sick were adequately cared for, cities were perfectly planned and beautifully created, the people enjoyed complete religious freedom, and the greatest pleasure for those who lived there was derived from doing good to others.

The name of this land? Utopia. It means “no place.”

Thomas More knew what he was doing, naming his fantasy island “no place,” because there has never been any place on earth (at least since the Fall) like Utopia—and until Jesus Christ returns, there never will be.

Not that people haven’t hoped for it though. In the early years of the twentieth century, for instance, many believed that we were on the verge of Utopia. After all, the major powers were at peace, the economy was booming, knowledge was increasing, eugenics was showing great promise (it worked fine with dogs), China was still open to Christian missionaries, and trains were running on time. So, Queen Victoria’s chaplain Charles Kingsley wrote, “The railroad, Cunard’s liners and the electric telegraph are . . . signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe.”

This cosmic harmony, however, was short lived. Not long after the first decade of this new era, a Bosnian terrorist named Gavrilo Princip shot an Austrian archduke in the streets of Sarajevo, starting World War I. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Though it’s certainly normal that people would hope for something better, nothing in Scripture promises anything remotely utopian for this world—at least not prior to God’s remaking of heaven and the earth after Christ returns. In fact, Jesus, in His famous discourse in Matthew 24, painted a picture of humanity that should dismiss any utopian fantasies as just that: fantasies.

The setting for Jesus’ great sermon about the last days was the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem, where He sat with His disciples overlooking the temple and all its attendant buildings. In this context, the disciples asked, “ ‘Tell us, . . . when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ ” (Matthew 24:3). It was in response to this question that Jesus, in this relatively short discourse, laid out the basic moral and spiritual course of the world right up to His return.

“Jesus answered: ‘Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, “I am the Christ,” and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains’ ” (verses 4–8).