Minister’s Forum

By Editor | June 2, 2011 |

If you are reading this article, it means one of two things: Either you were overlooked in the most recent prediction of the “rapture,” or yet another self professed prophet of God has given us yet another bogus date on when the end of the world will take place.

I personally am leaning toward the latter, as I believe most of you are pretty decent folk, of whom God wouldn’t think twice about inviting into his “mansion with many rooms.”
Predictions of the end times are nothing new to our generation. One thing I always remind my congregation and Bible study is that every generation thinks they are the last. Throughout history, every generation since the death and resurrection of Christ has thought theirs was the last, and every generation since the death and resurrection of Christ has been wrong.
So, this is nothing new, and unfortunately, I don’t believe it will deter future predictions from taking place. Even the apostle Paul was pulled into the end-times predictions arena. Much of his writings and preaching was influenced by this notion that Christ would make his return within his lifetime. However, I would never want to put Paul in the same category as all of these other kooks who are going around telling the world that they are privy to revelations from God to which the rest of us don’t have access.
We must first humbly acknowledge that God has made it abundantly clear that none of us – let me repeat that, none of us – has any clue when the world will come to an end, or when God will “call the faithful” home. It’s really too bad that some people can't understand God’s statement that no one will know the time when this will take place. It’s interesting that God did not add the caveat that he would tell certain people when this time would happen. God never said that he would make it known to any human being, alive or dead, what his plans are for the return of Christ. That in and of itself should table any discussion on the subject, but the sad fact is that we have long had a history of not taking God’s word on much of anything. Someone once said that in the land where nothing is sacred, nothing is sacred. We somehow refuse to accept God’s Word made manifest, through Christ, that none of us will know.
This forces me to draw one of two conclusions on individuals who proclaim to profess that they know when the end will be:
1) These are people suffering from untreated mental illnesses or personality disorders. When we study the so-called prophets of doom, many of them suffer from a myriad of mental illnesses or personality disorders. These are often the people who cause great havoc to their followers lives’ when their proclamations and lives are exposed as complete frauds. We all remember the Heaven’s Gate cult that killed themselves when Comet Hale-Bopp passed through the sky, or the Jonestown tragedy, or the followers of William Miller who sold all their belongings and gave away their money because they believed their leader had inside information as to when the end was going to take place. The list goes on and on, and the toll of human misery this delusion has cost is impossible to calculate. Yet it still continues.
2) Then there are the second category of “prophets,” which I find particularly repugnant and almost unforgiveable. Those are the men and women who are making huge profits, claiming to know what God has told us that they can’t possibly know. These are the folks on TV and writing books that are raking in untold millions on this subject. What is interesting is that they continue to string out the inevitable timeline so long as people continue to send them money.
I can remember back in the '70s, when Hal Lindsay wrote the book "The Late Great Planet Earth," which was yet another attempt to convince people that he had the right date and time that the world would end – and it was going to be sooner than most people realized. People bought his book by the millions, and as a result, he was making millions by duping the public into believing him and his prophesies. Interestingly enough, when it was exposed that he was investing his millions in long-term bonds that matured beyond his predictions of the end, no one blinked an eye. They continued to buy his books and feed his unending greed and deceit. The list in this category goes on and on. Suffice it to say, there is great profit to be made in duping the public.
Why is it that we, as a society, are so obsessed with the second coming? This has always mystified me, not only as a human being or a Christian, but as a pastor as well. I know it makes for scintillating conversation and great movie plots, but why would anyone buy into these self-proclaimed prophets, who are basically calling God a liar?
I honestly believe that the reason God has decided to keep this information about the second coming of Christ from us is because we haven’t even taken the first coming of Christ seriously. How do we know we haven’t taken the first coming seriously? That’s easy – as long as there is human suffering and we do nothing about it, we haven’t taken the first coming seriously. As long as there is rampant starvation when the earth provides more than enough for everyone, and when there is disease and misery in the world even though we have the best health care of any generation, then we haven’t taken the first coming seriously. As long as there is flagrant injustice and bigotry in our communities and world, we refuse to acknowledge the first coming with any seriousness.
When you think of all the time, energy and resources squandered away in this pursuit to out-guess God, it causes one to shudder. When we, as Christians, can get together and put the Campings, Hinns, Lindseys, Roberts, Anglys – and a long list of others – out of business and focus all those resources on bringing about the love, peace and reconciliation that Christ commanded us to bring, maybe then we would look as though we take the second coming seriously. Maybe then, the world will see that Christ is, indeed, King.
Sadly, as long as these types make the headlines – instead of the youth group that holds a fund-raiser to help out a food bank, or a denomination that sends down a team of people to help clean up after a natural disaster, or a Sunday School teacher that takes out time from his or her busy weekend to teach a class – the people of the world will look at us and scratch their heads in wonder.