Formerly known as Faith Beyond Belief
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If you’re ever bored, just type “The world is doomed,” into your search engine. I tried it, and I can tell you from personal experience that you won’t lack for hair-raising reading material after that. There seems to be a worldwide consensus, and not just among Christians, that we are living in the last days. For example, about three years ago a publication associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published what it called “a brief list of the existential and catastrophic risks facing the human species,” and believe me, the scientists behind the article are seriously concerned that the world could end in our lifetime. And it could come from any of several directions, including some you’ve likely never thought of.
Autonomous weapons could arise within the next ten years, the experts say, and when those bad boys go operational, a bit of rogue code or irresponsible use “could lead to mass violence on a scale and speed we don’t understand today.” After that it gets worse. But all kidding aside, while the rest of the list may seem more familiar, it is no less frightening, including such mundane items as cyberattacks, data theft, and, in the natural world, extreme weather, catastrophic climate change, biological and chemical warfare, food and water crises, ecological collapse, pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, and asteroid collisions. No joke, all of this is in the article. By the way, I forgot about artificial intelligence. The giant heads at MIT are concerned that it could do some damage as well. Underlying all the scary stuff is the most frightening prospect of all. To quote the article, “Most [of these end-of-the-world scenarios] are interconnected, meaning that one event—such as a nuclear detonation—is likely to trigger others, like water and food crises, economic depression, and world war.”
But what do Christians have to say about the future? Surprisingly, many Christian thinkers (well, Christian writers, anyway) agree with the scientific doomsayers. In fact, if you study the history of preaching about last things, you will discover that Christian end-of-the-world pessimism, which only started in the first half of the 19th century, preceded secular pessimism by several decades. For almost 200 years English-speaking evangelicals have been inundated with declarations that “the time is near,” or “Christ is coming soon,” and so on. Such preaching has always included references to the Great Tribulation accompanied by descriptions of famine, war, and horrible acts of inhumanity.
Worst of all, from earliest days leaders in the movement emphasized that the days of converting cities and nations by the preaching of the gospel were over. Here’s J. N. Darby speaking in 1840. And mind you, while he was a small voice at that time, speaking to relatively small audiences, he was widely read, and by the turn of the 20th century his view had swept all before it. In other words, if you grew up in an evangelical English-speaking church, chances are the ideas you heard expressed in future-oriented sermons were first formulated by Darby. By the time you could understand anything, the pessimism Darby expresses had become the very atmosphere of the only Christian world most of us have ever known.
“What we are about to consider will tend to show that, instead of permitting ourselves to hope for a continued progress of good, we must expect a progress of evil; and that the hope of the earth being filled with the knowledge of the Lord before the exercise of His judgment, and consummation of this judgment on the earth, is delusive. We are to expect evil, until it becomes so flagrant that it will be necessary for the Lord to judge it.”
No wonder modern times have been filled with end-of-the world fears. If that’s what Christians believe, why shouldn’t unbelievers adopt their own forms of pessimism. Nor should we wonder that people living in the 20th and 21st centuries have been unable to shake themselves free of a deadly attraction to communism. If there is no hope in God for the world’s future, then where else can people go? Communism is a false hope, but the past 100 years have proven this, at least, that it is easier to sell false hope than no hope.
What, then, should Christians have been preaching and practicing for these past 18 decades since Darby first poured out his poisonous, and unbiblical message? And what should we be preaching now? Well, since we don’t have time for a Genesis to Revelation Bible study, let me point you to two related passages, one in the Old Testament, and one in the new. The blanks you will have to fill in for yourselves.
In the last chapters of Ezekiel, the prophet describes a future glorious temple that is obviously too big and too celestial to ever be thought of as a real structure to be built on earth. In fact, it is a metaphorical description of the worldwide temple found in the New Testament church and declared as such in I Corinthians 3:16-17 (see also Rev. 3:12). Ezekiel had to speak in terms of a physical temple because Pentecost had not yet occurred and no one in his day would have understood the concept of a Spiritual temple (for more on this concept see also Ephesians 2:11-22).
Here’s the truly fascinating part of Ezekiel’s temple. After fully describing the new building’s glories the prophet is then brought to the door where he sees a trickle of water flowing out, heading towards the Dead Sea. But as the river flows, it rapidly grows larger and larger, till by the time it reaches the Jordan valley it overflows into the very ocean. Everywhere the river goes, it turns saltwater into freshwater. It is filled with fish, and all the banks of all the freshened waters (in other words, the nations of the world) will be filled with fruit trees, symbolic of the fruitfulness of the gospel all over the world. This last isn’t a guess on my part. Ezekiel explicitly states, “Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing” (Eze. 47:12).
Ezekiel’s temple appears again in the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22. But this time John is the prophet receiving a guided tour. And when you read the description, it is impossible to miss that John is describing the same temple. “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:1-2).
Don’t fail to notice the timeframe for this passage. The last chapter of Revelation is clearly not about the eternal state after the end of time. Nor is it set in some future millennium after the return of Christ. Rather, the last chapter ends with exhortations to believe in Jesus, “The Spirit and the Bride (the church) say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Rev. 22:17). In other words, this chapter is set in our time, a time when the gospel is preached, souls are saved, and the nations are healed by the water of life and the fruit of the Spirit.
This is a message of hope, dear friends. Sure, the number of converts is still small relative to the world’s population, and it certainly cannot be said that the nations are yet healed. But the Bible says that by the ordinary means of preaching the gospel these things will happen. The world will be converted, and the nations will be healed. So let us turn from pessimism to hope, from dilatory aimlessness to purposeful living (In God’s timetable it is never four o’clock on Friday, it is always 6:00 a.m. on Monday!) We’ve got work to do. The world’s pessimism should not offend you; rather, it should pierce your heart and stir repentance in your soul. Who taught people to give up because it’s all over? We did, dear friends. And it’s time we corrected our message. It’s the only way to save the world.
