Armageddon it
It's the end of the world as we know it And I feel fine. --REM
Some say the end is near Some say we'll see Armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will; I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three-ring circus sideshow. --Tool
Is the world ending soon? Is the Second Coming around the corner? A lot of my fellow Christians seem to think so. Why is it so important to so many people to believe that we are living in the End Times? Read on for a few of my comments on the topic.
That "prophecy" is a dominant topic within American evangelical circles today is no secret; a simple trip to the "Christian" section at your local Barnes and Noble will treat you to the site of countless shelves of books by self-professed prophecy experts attempting to provide easily-digestible answers to questions about Armageddon and the Antichrist. At my job, I have encountered hundreds of Christian websites devoted to the topic of prophecy and the idea that the world will end within our generation.
Theologically, I am not a dispensationalist; but I understand that many of my fellow Christians are. I have no problem with their belief that we are living in the End Times, as it is in fact a fundamental part of their cosmology. However, I have begun to wonder if the belief in an imminent apocalypse hasn't spread beyond the borders of the rather specific doctrines of dispensationalism into other branches of Christianity. In a recent conversation with a Christian Reformed acquaintance, I was surprised to hear my friend--an amillenialist who doesn't interpret Revelation as a literal picture of 20th century history--point out to me as if it were obvious that we were living in the End Times.
Are we living in the End Times? Is the end of the world right around the corner? I suppose it's possible (I mean, who really knows?), but I don't there's much special evidence for believing that we're near the End. For thousands of years, people have believed that their generation was the last, that events in their lifetimes matched perfectly with the apocalyptic visions of Revelation, that the prevalence of evil and godlessness had grown so great that the Lord's return must be imminent. Today, many Christians seem to share this same general feeling: that the world has never been more evil and that we are at the edge of the Apocalypse.
I genuinely don't understand this. If the destruction of Rome, or the fall of Constantinople, or the Black Plague, or the French Revolution, or the Holocaust, or hundreds of other epic disasters didn't signal the end of the world, can people really believe that the World Trade Center attack (a tragedy to be sure, but pretty minor in the grand scheme of history) is irrefutably a sign of the oncoming End? Are people unaware that hundreds of generations before them have used the same words, the same Bible verses, to predict that the End would come in their lifetime? Is there a subtle psychological benefit that we derive from a belief that the world will end soon? Why are people so interested in this? And beyond simple interest, why does it seem that the idea of an impending End is permanently implanted in the hearts and minds of so many believers?
It's not too hard to see where this belief in imminent apocalypse has its origins. Numerous parables (see Matthew 25 for at least two examples) warn us that the End will be both unexpected and terrifying for those caught unprepared. Furthermore, Jesus himself predicts an imminent End within the first generation of the early Christian church. But the fact that these parables and statements, with their strong implication that the world will end in the very near future, obviously did not come true within the lifetimes of their original audiences, implies to me that such statements are not referring to the end of the world in the way that most people want them to. If these were references to the specific end of the world, they would have been meaningless and misleading to the original intended audience, and in the case of Jesus' statement, an outright false prophecy--a possibility I don't accept. But if these passages are rather intended to communicate a general encouragement to believers to serve God wholeheartedly at all times (because we never know when, say, death might claim us), why are people trying to use these sorts of passages to pinpoint when the End will come? Since such comments weren't literally true for Jesus' audience, doesn't it make sense to look for an alternate interpretation that a) would have had relevance to early Christians and b) doesn't require that they be referring to the end of the world, which didn't happen? Or should we arbitrarily assume that these comments were literal, but stated purely for the benefit of 21st century Christians living in the real End Times? How many more generations of Apocalypse-guessing will we have to endure before somebody finally realizes that the Bible just doesn't tell us when the world will end?
If you were reading this entry hoping for answers, I'm sorry to disappoint you. This is simply a phenomenon that I don't understand. I don't believe the world is about to end--not because it's impossible that the Lord might return tomorrow, but because I see no real evidence for it beyond our apparent human psychological need to believe that we are living at the crux of history, that our generation is the pivotal one upon which the salvation of the doomed world depends. What do you think? Do you believe the world will end soon? Why? My enquiring mind wants to know.