A Sign of the Times

July 21, 2002

Genesis 28:10-19/ Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43

“For Christians with an interest in prophecy, the headlines always come with asterisks pointing to scriptural footnotes. That is how Todd Strandberg reads his paper. By day, he is fixing planes at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Neb. But in his off-hours, he's the webmaster at raptureready.com and the inventor of the Rapture Index, which he calls a "Dow Jones Industrial Average of End Time activity." Instead of stocks, it tracks prophecies: earthquakes, floods, plagues, crime, false prophets and economic measurements like unemployment that add to instability and civil unrest, thereby easing the way for the Antichrist. In other words, how close are we to the end of the world? The index hit an all-time high of 182 on Sept. 24, as the bandwidth nearly melted under the weight of 8 million visitors: any reading over 145, Strandberg says, means "Fasten your seat belt."

This was the beginning of the cover article in Time Magazine two weeks ago. Yes, the apocalypse has gone main stream. The end has made the cover of Time Magazine. I actually tried to find Rapture Ready and I did. It was not nearly as interesting as the article in Time made it out to be. But the thought of eight million people going to it and reading that stuff and believing it makes me a little uneasy. Eight million was just one day.

I know that you have heard me talk about this before. Last fall my lectures had a lot to do with Christian belief in the apocalypse. And maybe I ought to just leave it alone. But there is a danger here that could be more than tragic. And so I have just got to say something about it.

These times certainly have their share of troubles. This may be as anxious a period as I have ever live through. It reminds me some of the Cuban Missile Crisis. My Dad had a bumper sticker back then that said, “Don’t worry they are still ninety miles away!” This of course was referring to the fact that the Russians were deploying nuclear weapons in Cuba that were aimed at the United States. I didn’t think it was funny, in fact as a boy I was quite frightened by the whole thing. I was not sure how far ninety miles was but it didn’t sound like we were too safe.

Anxiety seems just as high today. Everyone is uneasy about the possibility of another terrorist attack. Since we don’t know when it will come or how they will do it combined with the fact that they so successfully outsmarted us a year ago it makes it almost impossible not to worry about what is to come. The whole movement to close Indian Point which has seemed to me to be a little on the hysterical side is a symptom of this heightened anxiety I believe. Yes, if I had my druthers we would close that facility down and spend oodles on developing solar energy. Solar as I have said is the future and we should work toward it in a deliberate and reasoned way. But I am not particularly afraid of the risk of living near Indian Point now.

In this environment it is not surprising that there is more fear about that facility. In this environment I am not surprised that the stock market is taking a beating. The stock market does reflect the anxiety present in the economic markets and it does reflect the amount of anxiety in the culture at large. Until we regain a confidence in the future I would expect the stock market won’t recover.

With this much anxiety in the air I am not at all surprised that there is such a widespread and popular interest in the end of the world. The truth is that it too is an indicator of how anxious a particular group of people has become. But don’t think that our time is that much different than many others. The truth is that in the last two thousand years many a movement has been established and has thrived with apocalyptic understandings. Edgar Whisenant and his book 88 Reasons Why the Rapture will be in 1988 sold millions. He was a former NASA rocket engineer. He had to be very intelligent but of course he was wrong and sounds pretty crazy to any of us here. Hal Lindsey in the 1970’s wrote the best seller The Late Great Planet Earth which was outrageously popular, 28 million copies of that book are in print today. It told of the final political upheaval that would bring on the end. He too was wrong. But those books are still selling. And he is quoted in the article in Time Magazine. William Miller’s great disappointment was another event that affected thousands if not millions of people in the nineteenth century. Miller also had a theory that was inspired by a close reading of the Bible. He was certain the end was coming in 1843. It didn’t happen. The sad truth is that all of it is a bit too familiar too us. If you pay attention you hear this stuff all the time. Whether it is that guy on family radio who is certain the Bible is literally true and had the end coming in September three or four years ago, or that Korean who took out the full page ad in The New York Times announcing the day Jesus was to return, someone is always announcing the end. And when people get a little edgy discussions that start with “the end” become wildly popular.

Do you know that the most popular series of books today is a series called the “Left Behind” series. Yes they are books about people who get left behind after the rapture. The rapture is the event where the righteous are taken up to heaven before the tribulation which comes right before the end. There is a whole science to this and millions of people believe it.

Fortunately for the rest of us there is one thing that all the doom-sayers have in common: they have all been wrong. The troubling part is that no matter how wrong the prophets of destruction prove to be they still gather a following. And today that is especially frightening to me. It is frightening for this reason. I believe faith is the most powerful element in a human beings life. How one believes determines almost completely the quality of life of a person. Ask anyone who faced a crisis and succeeded, or some tragedy and survived, or particularly challenging beginnings and triumphed you will hear about what they believe. I have never heard otherwise.

It is obvious to me that our belief systems have a lot to do with our health and our welfare. It is a proven fact. How else do you explain the placebo effect? So I am always on guard against those beliefs that are particularly debilitating and dangerous. End time thinking is one such belief.

This is what frightens me about the popularity of the apocalypse. The apocalypse is being preached today to millions of people as the fulfillment of God’s work on earth when the anti-Christ will be defeated. The righteous will finally be called home to be with Jesus. That belief has fueled a great interest in Israel because that is where the last great battle is to take place. But that battle cannot take place until the third temple is built. In order for the third temple to be built of course the Al-Aqsa Mosque that is presently there must be destroyed. If you realize that this present cycle of killing and civil war was brought on by Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque you can imagine that the destruction of that very holy Muslim temple could bring on World War III.

But I don’t think it would be God’s will or the fulfillment of some great plan that God has had from the beginning, (why would God make such a terrible plan? Full of death and destruction?) I think it would be the result of some very bad and ill conceived choices. When faith makes you wish for war and destruction is it the kind of faith that anyone should support? It is a dangerous game that these end time preachers are playing and I don’t believe it has anything to do with God’s will.

Jesus said we shall not know the time or the date as if to tell us that speculation on such thing can only bring trouble. God wants a better world for all of us but that can never happen unless we believe it. This is only the end time if we choose it so. In Christ Jesus. Amen.