Are We Living in the Last Days?

Speculation about the end of time has become a favorite pastime for many Christians. If truth be known, it always has been. It is obvious from the reading of the New Testament that Jesus’ disciples expected his return during their own lifetime. In the year 960 a German theologian calculated 992 as the most likely year for the Second Coming of Christ. In 1665 a man named Solomon Eccles was jailed in London for striding through Smithfield Market stark naked, carrying a pan of burning sulfur on his head, declaring doom and destruction. In 1874 Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, concluded that the Second Coming has already taken place and that people had until 1914 to enter his faith or be destroyed. In 1967 Anders Jensen, the Danish leader of a sect known as The Disciples of Orthon, convinced his followers that the world would end in a nuclear holocaust on Christmas day. Since then, there have been many other “date-setters.” And each has been wrong.

What baffles me about all this is that Jesus very clearly stated that not even he knew the day or the hour—nor apparently the year or the century. What is it that makes us human beings so smug that we think we could have this all figured out when Christ himself can’t?

So, what then is our response to all this? Well, pure and simply, I think we should make the most of the present. Jesus seems to indicate that it is a waste of time looking for signs that the end of the world is imminent. He said, “An evil and adulterous generation seek for a sign…” (Mt. 16:4).

So, instead of wasting our time trying to determine when the end will come….why don’t we just make the most of the time we have….whether that is just another day or two…or thousands and thousands of years.

Whenever the end of the world as we know it comes I don’t want to be caught looking to the skies for some kind of sign. I want to be faithfully on task doing God’s work, making this world a better place while we have it. How about you?

Tim Hobbs, Pastor

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