Actor and comedian Robin Williams died this week of apparent suicide. He battled drug addiction most of his life, but for 20 years of his professional life he stayed clean. Not surprisingly, his Academy awards nominations came from his work during those two decades.

He was a funny man—although, like most modern comedians, sometimes he mocked things that ought not be ridiculed, like marriage, family, honor and God. Yet when his humor was clean, he was a master of comic timing and exaggeration, producing stress-reducing laughter for many people in many nations.

Mr. Williams’ tragic death comes at an unfunny time in world history and funnily enough serves as a microcosm of our age. Wars and rumors of wars as Jesus Christ forecasted them (see Matthew 24:6), religious hatred and murderous fanaticism (as usual in the Middle East), droughts portending food shortages (go back to Matthew 24), etc. Blindingly faster than the internet, the advance world news of Bible prophecy predicts, in that sense, the death of humor.

Yet the Bible, like a perfectly delivered punch line that lifts us out of the abyss, also reveals the ultimate time of joy: “…Death is swallowed up in victory” (see 1 Corinthians 15:54-58). Humor is often based on the dramatic reversal of fortune—of what’s expected. Without the knowledge that God reveals in the Bible, the only conclusion is that when you’re dead, you’re dead—and that’s what billions of people expected in the past and expect now.

However, God the Father and Jesus Christ actually created true humor. And the ultimate reversal of fortune from death….is resurrection! That is, in the final analysis, eternal life full of the joy of true laughter and genuine love for all—and love for the true God of the Bible first and foremost.

Unfortunately, most of mankind rejects the Holy Scriptures or simply doesn’t understand them. But that doesn’t need to apply to you or me if we seek to know and faithfully worship our Creator.

Humor will suffer and die in the soon-to-arrive, apocalyptic Great Tribulation that shakes this sad, old world leading up to the second coming of Jesus Christ, as supranational, ultimate King of all peoples. But the good news is that Christ will resurrect true, righteous good humor in the world tomorrow.  And well He should because Jesus Christ was a funny man too—and as the Savior of mankind the source of divine comedy. Laughter will live again.