to return to your place in the text.To read endnotes, click on the the note number, then click on the
The TV report featured apocalyptic writer Hal Lindsey, the
author of the 1970 hugely-popular best-seller, The Late, Great
Planet Earth.(3) The book predicted the fiery end of the world
based on Lindsey's reading of the book of Revelation (a view, by
the way, which polls say is shared by 50-million Americans who
are convinced the end will come in their lifetime). Lindsey
recently led 200 pilgrims on what could be called a doomsday tour
of Israel. The TV program showed him conducting a Bible study
about the battle of Armageddon which, as you Bible scholars know,
the book of Revelation identifies as the site of the climactic
battle between the forces of good and evil which will presage the
end. Hal was saying that the struggle will be incredible: "In
the first attack, a quarter of the population of the earth is
destroyed. Blood will stand to the horse's bridle for a space of
200 miles." That is a LOT of blood!
The members of Lindsey's tour group needed no convincing.
They believe that all the prophetic signs are pointing in that
direction - earthquakes, famines, floods, "wars and rumors of
wars." These are the last days. Soon comes the Rapture, the
instant calling to heaven of all good Christians, while everybody
else will be left behind. You have seen the bumper stickers for
years: "Warning: In case of the Rapture, this car will have no
driver." Perhaps that is part of God's judgment on unbelievers -
all these out-of-control vehicles careening every which way and
mowing down any reprobate who happens to be left in the road.
Then there are the bumper stickers in response: "In case of the
rapture, Can I have your car?" Uh huh.
Hal Lindsey is actually one of the less bombastic
predictors of the end. This week in Bethlehem a 60-year-old
American street preacher dressed in long black robes and a
baseball cap that says JESUS IS LORD who calls himself "Bobby
Bible," walked around Manger Square outside the Church of the
Nativity and warned all the Muslims going to Mosque, "On December
31 [Jesus] will part the sky and come partially down...Dead and
living Christians are going to go up to meet him. It's going to
be a catastrophe for you and wonderful for me. You will come
under the wrath of God. You are going to get a spanking."(4) Nice
fellow.
These are scary days over there. As the millennium
approaches in the Holy Land, both the Palestinian Authority and
Israeli police are on the lookout for apocalyptic groups or those
advocating violence or mass suicide to hasten what they believe
will be the coming of Jesus. And that is one of the reasons why
the State Department has issued the alert to Americans traveling
abroad this week - there are some real whackos out there who are
liable to do some very strange things in the name of religion.
So, what do you think? Is it all over this Saturday? Is
this when Jesus returns? It might be nice to be that precise,
but I seem to recall something that Jesus himself once said
concerning the question. We read it a moment ago: "...about that
day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the
Son, but only the Father." OK. As one commentator notes,
Hmm. Is there then any significance to this calendar change
this Saturday? To be honest, what is occurring is nothing more
than the Western world's odometer turning over (and remember,
other parts of the world use different calendar systems). Just
as there is a certain fascination with watching the gauge in your
car turn from 99,999 miles to 100,000, we are especially
attentive to this calendar move from 1999 to 2000. Despite all
the hype, this is not even the beginning of a new millennium - by
no account did the calendar start with the year ZERO; it would
have begun with the year ONE! But even that is deceptive because
when the calendar creators of in the Middle Ages began to publish
their calculations, they got some things WRONG. According to all
we can find out, Jesus was not born in the year ONE, but actually
four to six years earlier! If you wonder about the start of the
third millennium signaling the return of Jesus and the Rapture,
that would have been several years ago. If it occurred and you
and I missed it, I might be worried. I say MIGHT BE, because all
those folks who were going to leave me their cars are still here
too!
One little aside about the Rapture. I know you have heard
about it, and you may even think it is coming, but, for what it
is worth, for centuries of Christian teaching, no one else did.
This concept of a Rapture in which Christians are snatched away
from the troubles of this world at the return of Jesus comes from
a fellow named John Nelson Darby, a lawyer turned minister who
was a member of the Plymouth Brethren in England in the middle of
the 19th century. Darby preached something called Dispensational
Premillennialism which said that all of history could be divided
into seven eras or "dispensations" and that the present age,
which he called "the age of the church," immediately preceded
this "Rapture." Darby's excuse for a Rapture was that a seven-year period of terrible tribulation was coming and the church was
going to be spared that misery. Once the tribulation was over,
then a thousand-year-long reign of God - the Millennium - would
follow. The "Rapture" idea does not come from the book of
Revelation (as the concept of the tribulation and the thousand-year reign of God do) but rather from Darby's literal reading of
one tiny passage from the Apostle Paul in his letter to the
Thessalonians. Chapter 4, verses 16 and 17:
Two problems. First, the imagery is supposed to be
understood as poetic, not photographic (the same problem that
lots of folks like Hal Lindsay have in reading the book of
Revelation) - it was a wonderful word of hope for Christians who
were terribly worried that friends and relatives who had died
would miss the return of Jesus - Paul says NO, they will be
included too. The second problem is that Darby has taken two
texts from two different sources and joined them as if they were
a seamless whole. That is an interpretive no-no - as someone
very wise has said, "A text without a context is a pretext."
This idea of a Rapture is a relatively new concept in the church,
and despite all we hear about it, has hardly any biblical
support. The point is this: if you are worried about the
Rapture, DON'T! If the Bible doesn't, you need not either.
OK. The Bible does not teach some "Rapture." But the Bible
clearly teaches that Jesus is coming again. The church around
the world affirms it over and over in our creed: "I believe in
God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in
Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the
Holy Spirit, etc. etc...He ascended into heaven and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence HE SHALL
COME...to judge the quick and the dead."
HE SHALL COME. We do not hear as much about that in the
church these days as we did in the past. That is probably a
reaction to the excesses of the apocalyptic loonies - we do not
want to be tarred with that brush. But I did hear a good deal
about it as I was growing up. Perhaps you did too. Mostly, it
was shared as a way of keeping sinful teenagers in line (and I
suspect that has been the case for every generation for almost
2,000 years): "Do not be caught somewhere or with someone or
doing something which would be an embarrassment if the Lord
should come back right then and see you." And there was the
reminder that the Second Coming could be at any moment, so BE
READY! Did the warnings work? Well... The most recent warning
I have seen is on another bumper sticker: "Jesus is Coming. Look
Busy!"
Is the Lord coming back? As I say, scripture says so, and
so do we from week to week: "from thence HE SHALL COME..." But,
so saying, the return might not be in the way that traditional
understanding has taught (and I can promise it will not be the
cause of massive traffic accidents because of driver-less
vehicles - what kind of God would cause such a mess?). So
saying, I am satisfied to leave the details in the Lord's hands.
I am content to know that, one day, whether individually at the
end of my earthly journey or as one of a great band of believers
at the end of history, he is coming for me, and I will see him
face to face.
As we approach the year 2000 this week, that is not a cause
for alarm for us. Rather, it is wonderful word of comfort. This
century that is coming to a close has been mind-boggling, a time
of exponential change. When it began, the world's population was
less than 2-billion people; it ends with more than 6-billion of
us. When it began, the median life expectancy in America was 40
years; it ends with a life expectancy for men of 76, for women,
85. When it began few American homes had electric power; it ends
with TV's, VCR's, microwaves, personal computers and more gadgets
in every household than we could begin to name. When it began we
were first encountering horseless carriages; it ends with space
shuttles and missions to Mars. When it began there were a few
telephones here and there; it ends with the internet and
instantaneous global communication at our fingertips. Amazing
changes!
But the coin has two sides. This century has also brought
unprecedented death and suffering. There was the Mustard Gas of
World War I, the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
World War II, the nuclear missiles of the Cold War that
threatened global destruction. There was genocide on a massive
scale - Hitler's gas chambers and death camps, the ethnic
cleansing recently in eastern Europe, the slaughter in Rwanda as
one tribe went after another with axe handles and sickles.
Despite unprecedented prosperity, much of the world still goes to
bed hungry. In America today there are the well-documented
horrors at Columbine High School, at Paducah, Kentucky, or just
days ago at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. But there are also these
sobering statistics: a major crime is committed every 22 seconds,
there is a murder every 34 minutes, a quarter-million teenage
girls are pregnant, 1-million teenagers are alcoholics. In the
face of all that, we WANT Jesus to come back. And SOON!
The good news I bring to you this morning is that he IS
coming. This Saturday? Probably not. But, as Jesus himself
said, "Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will
come."
In recent days, we have been hearing about the impending
retirement of Charles Schultz, who for so many wonderful years
has been the author of the Peanuts comic strip. Schultz has
always had some marvelous wisdom, some of which is applicable
this morning. In one of the strips, Linus and Lucy are standing
at the window looking out at the rain falling. Lucy says to
Linus, "Boy, look at it rain...What if it floods the earth?"
Linus, the resident biblical scholar for the Peanuts strip,
answers, "It will never do that...in the ninth chapter of
Genesis, God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the
sign of the promise is the rainbow."
With a smile on her face, Lucy replies, "Linus, you've taken
a great load off my mind."
Linus responds, "Sound theology has a way of doing that."(6)
Indeed, indeed.
Sound theology this morning says the world has not seen the
last of Jesus Christ. If we do not meet him this Saturday, we
will encounter him at the end of our lives or at the end of human
history, whenever that might be. There will come a day when the
aim of God, the dream of God, the purpose of God will be
realized. There will come a day when EVERY knee shall bow...and
EVERY tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.(7)
Are you ready? Can you hear it? Down through the corridors of the
centuries faintly echo the strains that have become so familiar
but slowly build to a crescendo and which one day will resound
through the rafters of the universe. Can you hear it? Louder
and louder it gets: "King of kings and Lord of lords and he shall
reign forever and ever! Hallelujah and Happy New Year!"
Amen!
1. 12/22/99 broadcast produced by Michael Rosenbaum; Copyright 1999, CBS Worldwide
Inc., All Rights Reserved. 2. http://www.olivetree.org/registra.htm 3. With C. C. Carlson, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970) 4. Christine Hauser, "Bobby Bible' Warns Jesus Is Coming to Holy Land," Reuters News
Service, 12/20/99 5. William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible, CD-ROM edition (Liguori, MO: Liguori
Faithware, 1996) used by permission of Westminster/John Knox Press 6. Quoted by Bass Mitchell, via Ecunet, "Sermonshop Sermons," 11/24/97 7. Philippians 2:10-11
"Jesus says that he does not know...There were things
which even he left without questioning in the hand of
God. There can be no greater warning and rebuke to
those who work out dates and timetables as to when he
will come again. Surely it is nothing less than
blasphemy for us to enquire into that of which our Lord
consented to be ignorant."(5)
For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the
archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet,
will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will
rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will
be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet
the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord
forever.
click and send us mail