It belongs to a group of late Willink paintings that portray apocalyptic confrontations between modern technology and the ancient world.

[2] The temple is likewise based on a building in the park, but the collapsing part is from a 1937 news photograph of the Rotunde in Vienna, which was demolished with explosives after it was destroyed in a fire.

[2] Willink's fascination with the Garden of Bomarzo began when he saw pictures of it in the book Die Welt als Labyrinth (1957) by Gustav René Hocke [de].

[1] The art historian Michiel Koolbergen said To the Future is the painting that best shows Willink's view of human self-destruction.

He made a comparison with Willink's Bomarzo painting The Eternal Cry (1964), in which the destruction happens behind the horizon, and wrote that only in To the Future is it explicit why the sculptures look upset, because "the world fire" actually is seen.