Thursday, November 18, 2010

The End is Near (a delayed sermon)

I realized as I was writing a sermon for Sunday, that I forgot to post last Sunday's sermon.  So here is it, based on Luke 21:5-19 the apocalypse, the end is near!


The world is going to end! Armageddon is upon us! The signs of the apocalypse are happening now! The rapture will happen any moment now! Doom’s day is a coming! The end is near! Judgment day is here!

Earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, war, famine, plagues. Jesus says that there will be signs. And yet since Jesus said these words, people have sat down and try to solve them thinking they can figure out exactly when the end of the world will happen. For the last two thousand years some people have thought they knew when the world will end.

Most of us can easily recall the fear some people had only 11 years ago, that when the clock struck midnight on January 1st 2000, the world would end. Or at least all the computers would self destruct and we would be back in the Stone Age. Programmers spent years making sure that computers could handle the change of date, people stockpiled food and water, and a few even built bomb shelters.

Others think that the world will end in 2012 because that is when the Mayan calendar ends. And I once saw a van at the Wilton Library that had a sign up on it rear windshield that Jesus is coming back May, 21 2011 (which coincidentally is my mom’s birthday, so I guess I don’t have to get her a present)

And there are plenty of websites dedicated to predicting the end of the world. Rapture Watch, Doomsday Clock, and my personal favorite Rapture Ready are just a few. At RaptureReady.com they nicely have a rapture index where they keep track of the likelihood of the rapture happening based on 45 different indicators which they update weekly. Fortunately for us, the index went down by one this last week because the category “liberalism” was downgraded due to the Republican gains in the House of Representatives. So we can all rest just a little easier.

The people who subscribe to this idea that the end is near look at things like record breaking snowfalls in the mid-Atlantic, the earthquake in Haiti, the volcano in Iceland that practically halted air travel in Europe, flooding in Pakistan, the volcano and tsunami in Indonesia and now cholera outbreaks in Haiti, all of which have happened this year alone, and think that they are signs that the world is going to end and the world is going to end soon.

And there is no reasoning with some people who have this idea in their mind. You can’t explain that natural disasters have always happened; we just didn’t have 24 hour cable news that beats stories to death in order to fill their air time.

And if you think that the world is going to end at any moment, then what is the point of living? What is the point of going to work? Of creating a home? Of making friends and other relationship? Of raising kids? Of planting a garden? What is the point of doing all these things if we are not going to be around to reap the benefits of our labors?

Well first off I don’t think Jesus is telling us here when the world is going to end, or even that it is going to end anytime soon. Instead Jesus is encouraging his follower to keep following his teachings and example even after he is gone. He is encouraging them to stay strong in their beliefs so that they are not lead astray by false prophets and false believers. And then Jesus says some remarkable that often gets overlooked because it is said in the midst of all this apocalyptic talk.

Jesus tells people that in the midst of trial, in the midst of some of the worst moments of their lives, that God is still there and you are still able to tell others about Jesus.

For the last few months at the beginning of worship I have asked you were you have seen God at in your lives. Many of the times our answers have been in some of the positive parts of our lives – through the beauty of nature, through family and friends. And it is wonderful that we see God in positive moments of our lives. But the moments that are the most powerful, the moments that strongly testify to others about God’s power is when you can see God in the midst of trial.

God is at funerals as family and friends gather to mourn their lost and support one another.

God is there in the midst and aftermath of natural disasters, in people who have never been to Haiti, Pakistan, Indonesia, donating money, food, and clothing to be sent to people they have never met and will never meet so that those people who have lost everything may not also lose their spirit.

God is there in crowded airports as planes are grounded due to volcanoes, hurricanes or snow storms and a makeshift community forms and people who would normally never talk to each other watch each others luggage so the other can go to the bathroom or get food, share internet connection so they can look up alternate travel arrangements or cell phones so they can call loved ones.

God is in the quietness of a city halting snowstorm as neighbors who have lived next to each other for years get to actually meet each other in block wide snowball fight. God is in neighbors helping each other dig out of their homes and clear their cars from mounds of snow.

Christ is in the midst of our joys and our sorrows. Christ is with us when we are so willing to follow him and helping us from being led astray by false preachers. Christ will give us the words to say when we feel like we are not able to say anything, or at least not anything meaningful. Christ is with us in peaceful times and in times of war. Christ is with us on beautiful days when there is not a cloud in the sky and in the midst of the storms. Christ is with us when we are healthy and when our bodies are ailing. Christ is with us forever.

1 comment:

  1. The Rapture Index (Mad Theology)
    by Dave MacPherson

    The "Index" (as in Todd Strandberg's "Rapture Index") lists 45 "precursors" which are earthly events reportedly acting as signposts pointing to the rapture and showing how close it is.
    Here's the mad theology: the Rapture Index's pre-rapture "precursors" include even "The Antichrist" and "The Mark of the Beast" which, in Todd's view, occur AFTER the rapture! What's more, all of his "precursors" are on earth AFTER the point in time for a "pretribulation" rapture, are actually fulfilled DURING Todd's seven-year tribulation period, and in fact point to ONLY the (posttribulation) Second Coming to earth and not to any sort of "pretribulation" coming of Christ - a concept that NO organized church and NO official theology ever taught before 1830!
    Todd even believes in pretribulationism's "signless" rapture - which adjective is believable if Tricky Todd can convince us that "precursors" can never be "signs"!
    See Google and type in "Deceiving and Being Deceived" (one of my earliest internet articles) to see why the claims for Pseudo-Ephraem and Morgan Edwards (as "pre-1830 pretrib teachers") are totally groundless.
    Also Google "Famous Rapture Watchers," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," "Walvoord Melts Ice," "Edward Irving is Unnerving," "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," "Open Letter to Todd Strandberg," "Wily Jeffrey," "Pretrib Rapture - Hidden Facts," "Pretrib Rapture Secrecy," "Pretrib Hypocrisy," "Appendix F: Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Thieves' Marketing," and "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty."
    Be sure to obtain my bestselling nonfiction book "The Rapture Plot" (available at Armageddon Books online) if you would like to see 300 pages of the most detailed and most accurate history of the 180-year-old pretrib rapture view.

    /above item seen by me while netting - Tom/

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