End Times?

Not too long ago I was talking with man I know casually, a man who is a Christian and who knows I'm a pastor.  He was wondering a bit about current events and end times.  From his point-of-view there seemed to be a number of things going on in the world that suggested that the end was drawing near.

"End times" is a dicey subject. The Bible teaches of it, but not in such a way as to be crystal clear in all the details. There are a number of different viewpoints, each of which may be valid, without those differences falling outside of saving faith.  I am not my friend's pastor, and so I don’t know what his pastor may teach on the subject, or what the faith statement of his church may have to say about it.

Jesus speaks of end times several times, all basically in the same way. In Mark 13:32-33 he says:

“But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come."

If the one I call Savior and Lord doesn't know when the end will come, that is good enough for me.  As a husband, father and pastor, he has certainly given me plenty of things to do in his service in the meantime.

But in the same passage he says "keep awake" and so with that thought in the back of one's mind it is easy to read Revelation and to watch the news and wonder if some of the events that will precede the return of the Lord are happening now.

I think that for many Christians their "end times" meter begins to rise whenever anything happens in Israel, or among it's neighbors.  But…in my lifetime…there has never been a real, lasting peace between Israel and it's neighbors, or within the countries nearby.  Are today's events really any different than what took place in Israel in 1967, or 1973?  Or the rise or Islamic nationalism in 1979?

One thing that I do think that the Bible teaches, in a non-specific way, about end times is that things will generally get worse throughout the world.  That injustice and evil will increase in ways that are subtle and accepted by a broad swath of people. And in that sense I do believe there is evidence that history is continuing to move towards that time when the Lord returns and history comes to an end.  Here are three things that come to mind this morning:

1. The Alfie Evans case. This is an absolute tragedy. Whatever the circumstances may have been from a medical perspective, it was morally wrong for the government of England to intervene against the parents, particularly when another government was willing and able to provide completely for Evan's medical care.  A government, which intervenes to bring about death rather than life, is one which may be on the downside of the slippery slope, with no hope for return.

2. The normalization of abortion as "heath care." While in the interview excerpts cited here Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, is vague about the moment life starts, I think that most adults with same basic education about biology would agree that something distinctly human, and distinctly alive, is present at the moment of conception. To have large segments of our population believe that the intentional ending of that life at any point between conception and birth as an act that has no moral difference from birth, something to call "health care", may well be, as in the Evan's case, a sign that our culture is on the downside of the slippery slope, with no hope for return.

3. Attempts in California to regulate free speech. In the time of my childhood we would say to each other "Sticks and stone may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."  We said it, and we believed it. Now we have come to a point in time when to write and sell books that would oppose ideas on human sexuality that in less than one generation have moved from nearly impossible to believe in to mainstream must be fought through legislation. Instead of "live and let live" things seem to be moving toward "Let me live and don’t dare tell me that what I'm living is actually a lie."

End times. They are coming, on the Lord's timing.  We may not know the specific meanings of some of the events of Revelation, but we do know that for people confessing Jesus as their Savior and Lord, the persecution of those times may be very hard, even to death.  But we also know the promises of God to his children, promises that no end times events can alter, and so I'll close with the words of Romans 8:31-39:

"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?  Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?  As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.