05/08/2023
Everything You Need To Know About End Times...
...In One and a Half Pages
The powers and principalities of this world—the governments and corporations, all our ideologies and economic systems; all the ‘isms’ that we have found comfort in, and all the tribal allegiances that have offered us some semblance of security —are arrayed against the Kingdom of God and therefore deeply resistant to any signs of its growth or expansion into our world. These powers are going to fight back whenever they feel threatened and they feel plenty threatened by those who passionately pursue justice, who love mercy, resist personal and systemic evil, and advocate loudly for peace and the best interests of their neighbors, those next door as well as those around the world.
It may look bad now, and it will even look worse down the road, but if you stay faithful, if you cling to Christ and to one another, you will share in the victory won by Jesus.
We don’t know the time (when the Kingdom is to come), the ‘when’ is above our pay grade (and always will be). We know it will be when God decides it will be. Since we do not know if it will be tomorrow or a thousand years from now, the one thing we can do is be ready. We need to practice constant vigilance—not in order to watch for some set of ‘signs’, but to watch so that we do not lose our first love for God and that we do not waver in our love for one another. Particularly in the book of Revelation, the emphasis is less on ‘when’ the end of all things will take place, and more on ‘who’ is seated at the center of all things—who always has been and who always will be. Those who understand this and live by it—even through trials and tribulations—have a spot reserved for them right near the center of the New Heaven and Earth.
In the meantime, our supreme allegiance is to the Lamb, who takes away the sins of this world. Anything or anyone who tries to usurp that allegiance in this “in between time” is to be ruthlessly eliminated from our lives and priorities, since they pose the gravest danger to our souls. If Jesus is Lord then no one and no cause will trump his Lordship in the hearts of his followers. We may or may not be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice on His behalf, but we will all be called to sacrifice any and every other claim upon our allegiance other than His own.
One final warning and a reminder of our calling. Anyone who looks forward to the separating of the wheat from the chaff—the saints from the sinners, the saved from the lost—in those final days, doesn’t know the Father’s heart. Anyone who anticipates the final judgment with anything but grief and sadness needs to have their hearts examined by the Great Physician.
God sent his own son, our true elder brother, all the way from heaven down to the various pigsties in which we have found ourselves, in order to bring all us younger brothers and sisters back home (Luke 15:11-32). To delight in the destruction of those wayward younger siblings—no matter how far gone—-is to delight in the loss to our Heavenly Father of his children, children he loves every bit as much as you and I. It is to find pleasure in the breaking of God’s heart. Such a thing is not possible for a true son or daughter of a God known throughout scripture for His steadfast loving-kindness. In fact, a true child of God will spend a great deal of this “in between time” traveling to one pigsty or another, doing what they can to invite their younger siblings to join them for a welcome home celebration featuring good wine, plenty of barbecue and, of course, Dad’s eager embrace.
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