It is very easy for us to say that something will occur sometime in the future. The most notable one is 'Repent, the end is nigh'. We are sure time will lasts forever and the prosperity of humans will end sometime in the future. It will end sometime after ten years, ten thousand years or ten million lightyear.

Nigh is merely a relative expression.

We often hear that why precaustions were not taken seriously after some terror occurred. I think we've got many precaustions including just a trick. We don't know whether the threat was real untill terrors actually occurred.

Repent, the end is nigh. But repentance never occurs beforehands.

On the other hand, it requires scholastic precision to determine what occurred in the past.