Matthew 25:1-13
One of the basic beliefs of the
Christian faith is that there will come a point where God looks at the universe
and says, “Okay. It’s time to wrap
things up!” and then does exactly that.
All the loose ends of history will be pulled together and all accounts
will be settled. Everyone’s lives will
be reviewed, and whatever needs to be put right will be put right. What happens beyond that is in God’s hands. That doctrine is supposed to be a hopeful and
comforting thought. It underlies the
visions of faith expressed in places like the book of Revelation [21:1-4]:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new
earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea
was no more. And I saw the holy
city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband. And
I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’”
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’”
There is a
catch, though. If faith tells us,
“Relax. God is in charge,” then we
really do have to trust God with the what and the when and the how. That means giving up control of the whole
business and not claiming (falsely) that we know the schedules and mechanics of
the coming of the kingdom as if we knew better than Jesus himself, who said, “you
know neither the day nor the hour.” [Matthew 25:13]
Let me make
three points about this whole business:
·
Some
people in good faith think that they can map out the future. They are wrong.
·
Some
people use that desire and people’s insecurities to make money. They are dangerous.
·
Jesus
was more concerned that whenever it happens, people are in the right spot. He should know.
First, then:
the Bible does not map out a timeline for the end of days. You can, if you want, go online and read a
lot of descriptions and debates about such matters. The chef who wrote the recipe for this soup
was a nineteenth-century British evangelist named John Nelson Darby. He came up with the language of a system
called “dispensationalism” where terms like “the rapture” or “the millennium”
get tossed around. Darby grabbed a verse
of scripture here and another there, mixing the book of Daniel, probably
written between 164 and 167 B.C. by a Palestinian Jew to encourage faithfulness
in the face of persecution with a letter of Paul to a group of Gentile
Christians living in Greece two centuries later as they were thinking about
members of their community who had died recently and then throwing in passages
from the book of Revelation that were the record of visions by a man in prison
who wanted (kind of like the in Daniel) to share them for the comfort of other
people who were suffering for their faith.
His process has been repeated in books like Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth[1]
that go into tremendous detail about predicting cosmic events. Televangelists like Jack van Impe go on at
great length in the same way.[2]
The problem
is that none of this is what the Bible was trying to get through to us. I appreciate the way it was put by a man
named Cliff Wall who recently wrote,
“The idea is
that before a period of seven years of tribulation and before the final judgment
Christ will partially descend to “take” true Christians up to meet him in the
air. Then after seven years of worldwide tribulation Christ will return with
his church to destroy the wicked and set up his kingdom. The problem is that
you can’t read this exact sequential scenario in any one place in the Bible. It
is a narrative that is pieced together by taking bits of passages from here and
there.
1
Thessalonians 4:13-18 for example contains one of those bits, and is one of the
primary places used to ‘prove’ the rapture, although the bit about the church
waiting out seven years of tribulation with Christ in heaven is not there. The
meeting in the air is simply concluded with the statement, ‘so we will be with
the Lord forever’ (v. 17 NRSV). Many scholars believe that the imagery of
meeting the Lord in the air evokes the common imagery in the ancient world of a
special envoy going out to joyously welcome a king or some other dignitary and
then immediately escorting him back into the city. One such scene may be found
in the Gospels when Jesus makes his entry into the city of Jerusalem on Palm
Sunday! Moreover, neither does chapter
five of 1 Thessalonians contain any such narrative of the Church awaiting with
Christ in heaven during a great tribulation. There is simply a warning that the
second coming will come unexpectedly like a thief and followers of Jesus should
be found awake and sober, not lulled asleep into conformity with the ways of an
evil world and not drunk on its spiked Kool-Aid either. This is symbolic
imagery that Jesus himself used.”[3]
Let me be
clear. What matters is not figuring out the
times or seasons so that you can protect yourself from cosmic destruction or
earthly troubles. If those are your
motivations, as they are for many people (not all, but many) who become fixated
on the end times, then you need to look at those motivations closely.
Other people have other motivations,
too, and those are not always honorable.
Fear sells. People make money
manipulating other people’s uneasiness. A
review in Christianity Today of the
most recent Left Behind movie, that
came out at the start of October, pointed out that this movie, like a lot of
others, is not necessarily “Christian”.
It simply targets a Christian audience, the way that Frozen targets pre-teen girls. It may be a little cynical, but the reviewer
said that,
“Hollywood producers …know
they can make back 5x their initial financial investment—they want to exploit
that, by pumping out garbage (not moral garbage, just quality garbage), slapping the ‘Christian’
label on it, and watching the dollars pour in.
They want churches to book
whole theaters and take their congregations, want it to be a Youth Group event,
want magazines like this one to publish Discussion Questions at the end of their
reviews—want the system to churn churn away, all the while netting them cash,
without ever having to have cared a shred about
actual Christian belief.”[4]
You can
make your own decision about that. Perhaps
a company called Entertainment One that also released a movie called The F Word in 2013 is truly looking out
for your spiritual welfare. Perhaps this
company that has a hand in the science fiction series Haven (which I happen to like) knows the distinction between
science fiction and the apocalyptic books of the Bible. Perhaps.
Do think it over, though.
Finally, having spent way too much
time on talking about the Bible
instead of considering what it actually says, I simply want to point out what
Jesus said in the parable we heard this morning. That is that we all have limited energy,
limited oil for our lamps, and if we use it foolishly, it won’t be there to use
on what it is provided for, which is to light the way for the Bridegroom when
he finally is ready to bring the kingdom of God into its fullness. Is anyone really brought into a living
relationship with the living God, or does anyone really learn about God’s love
in Christ by hearing speculation about “the number of the beast”? Maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt it. Either way, we have work to do before God
says to stop.
“Keep awake therefore, for you know
neither the day nor the hour.” [Matthew 25:13]
[1]
Hal Lindsey and Carole Carlson, The Late
Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1970).
[3]
Cliff Wall, “Revelation: for Speculation or
Transformation?” in UMC Holiness,
October 10, 2014 at
http://umcholiness.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/revelation-for-specualtion-or-transfromation/
[4] Jackson Cuidon in Christianity Today at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/october-web-only/left-behind.html?start=3
He goes on to remark: “They want to
trick you into caring about the movie. Don’t.
(We tried to give the film zero stars, but our tech system won’t allow
it.)”
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