The End Is Near

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…


The end is near. I figure another 15 years. Then I’ll be old and I’ll be ready. Of course, I’d better be ready right now.

Twenty-five years ago, a university professor left the church I pastored because we weren’t serious enough about divining the end times. I should have been suspicious of her when she first joined. Her PhD was from an ACC school, and they’re much better at basketball than prophecy. [1] I reminded her that Jesus had said that No one knows the day or the hour when the end will come. [Matthew 24:36] She replied, “Yes, but he didn’t say we couldn’t know the month or the year.” Now, that’s just willful perversion!

Still, I was sad to see her go. She could have been a good neighbor, helping others through their days. Instead she chose to waste her time trying to figure out when those days would end. Why not just get ready and stay that way? Jesus said that, too.

When I first went back to pastoring a congregation, following years in campus ministry and graduate school, some folks in my church in Orion, IL were upset because folks in another church were telling them the end was near. Those people knew the end was near because they were reading Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth. The end would be soon. That was 1974. The folks in both those congregations who believed the end was near were right; they’re all dead now. Hal Lindsey was right, too. The end is near. He’s 82 years old.

Then of course everybody got worked up about 1984 as the end, just because George Orwell wrote a futuristic novel with that title. That was followed by 2000, and everyone knew the world would end because computers would crash.

When I pastored in Arcola,IL, a NASA engineer with more money than brains paid to send a book to every minister in America. It was titled 88 Reasons the World Will End in 1988. It didn’t. He acknowledged that he had made a mathematical error. It would be 1989. Wrong again. If I were an astronaut, I’d be worried about the engineers they hire. But Edgar Whisenant was basically right. The end was near. For him. It was 2001.

If you’re in your winter years, the end is near. Of course, if you’re any other age, the end might be near, too. Young people get shot down and run over every day. Why waste your time trying to predict? The end is near. You just don’t know when. So get ready and stay that way.

How do you get ready for the end? Hug a friend. Pray for an enemy. Eat some pie. Share the pie. Recall a politician. Go to a ball game. Repeat.

The main thing to do to get ready for the end, of course, is to wear clean underwear. We learned that from our mothers a long time ago. You don’t want to approach the pearly gates and have the angels nudging one another and laughing behind their wings.

JRMcF

1] I am misusing prophecy here. The prophets did not foretell the future, they forth-told the truth. Unfortunately, foretelling is about all anyone wants from a prophet these days, when forth-telling would do us a whole lot more good.


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