"Are We Doomed? Examining the Meaning of 'The End is Near… Again!'"
The End is Near ... Again! Or so many people are claiming.
This is what our Savior said about when the end was coming: "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
Jesus himself said, 'You don't know the hour,' yet some self-appointed prophets today seem to know more than the angels or Jesus.
Now if we take a quick sample of what is being disseminated today we see that the world will end soon by either a combination of asteroids, earthquakes, plagues, the sun exploding, war, and the list goes on. Here are a few more examples:
· “World One” – A computer program named “World One,” developed in 1973 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), predicts 2020 to be the year when a series of catastrophic events kick off a 20-year process of a slow demise of humanity.
· The end of the world was supposed to be December 21, 2012, when one of the great cycles in the Mayan calendar came to an end. In the run-up to the day, the internet was filled with predictions about an apocalypse happening on “12/21/12”.
· The world was also going to end on October 21, 2011. American radio pastor Harold Camping had arrived at the date for the apocalypse through a series of calculations that he claimed were based on Jewish feast days and the lunar calendar. It didn’t happen.
· Scientists use the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, to set up controlled collisions of particles at very high speeds. The experiments have caused some conspiracy theorists to believe that the energies set free by the collisions will form a black hole powerful enough to consume Earth and all life on it. Nothing yet!
· Towards the end of the second millennium, people around the world feared that the world would end simultaneously with the beginning of the year 2000, or Y2K (remember that!). This prediction was based on the practice followed by computer programmers of abbreviating year numbers with two digits when developing software. For instance, "1999" would be coded as “99.” We still have jugs of water in our basement from that non-event.
TV Evangelist Pat Robertson recently said this:
…The next thing is the election that's coming up in just a few weeks, at which time, according to what I believe the Lord told me, the president is going to be re-elected,” Robertson prophesized during a recent broadcast. The preacher then said that Trump's victory is “going to lead to civil unrest, and then a war against Israel and so forth…” According to Robertson, the war's outcome has also already been pre-determined by God. “There is going to be a war, then a time of peace,” he said, before adding, “And then maybe the end.”
In May 1982, on an episode of The 700 Club, Robertson stated, "I guarantee you by the fall of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world.” In September 2011, he also incorrectly predicted various dates for the end of the world.
In January 2007, he told viewers of The 700 Club, that God spoke to him and told him that "mass killings" were to come in the year 2007, due to a terrorist attack that was going to happen to the United States. He said, "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that." When said terrorist attack failed to happen in 2007, he explained, "All I can think is that somehow the people of God prayed and God in his mercy spared us.”
In January 2012, the 90-year-old author claimed that God had spoken to him and he "thinks He showed me the next president" but would not name who it is. He leaned toward that next president not being President Barack Obama since God told him that President Obama's views were at "odds with the majority.” He then said that God had told him that Mitt Romney would win and would be a two-term President.
This is just one example of many. Go to YouTube and search end times for more examples.
Doomsday predictions have a bad track record and can also lead to another danger -- doing nothing, People decide that well it's all going to blow up so I can just sit back and wait. That is not what God calls us to do even right up to the end.
The world is broken. We are sinful. Because Adam sinned, we are in mortal bodies. Death is inevitable. But we need not fear. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:21: “For since [it was] by a man (Adam) that death came [into the world], it is also by a Man (Jesus) that the resurrection of the dead has come.”
In the days and months to come be firm in your faith, kind in your convictions, gracious in your words, and generous in your actions. The body of Christ believes there’s no election shock, no end-of-world predictions that compare with Easter morning.
Solomon’s prayer for Israel is still useful today.
“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14. (Note: God calls us to pray together as well as independently).
God spared the brutal, pagan people of Nineveh when they repented, fasted, and prayed in the days of Jonah. We belong to the Kingdom of God. We are temporary citizens of America. God has placed us all here for a time such as this. Our political opinions and votes are not self-expression. We glorify Christ Jesus and NO ONE ELSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pray and be humble in the days ahead!