The End is Near...

The ground shakes. Divine clouds roll in. An eerie silence creeps over the earth. Light fades in the heavens above just before bursting into a phenomenal display of booming blasts of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning. The end is near. Have you made your peace with God?

These were the signs that so many predicted would come. Is Jesus really coming back today? If you ask the New Zealanders who already survived their 6pm, I think they would tell you that we are safe until the next apocalyptic prediction. But why is it that doomsday is looming around every turn of the calendar?

1994. May 21st, 2011. 2012. The list goes on.

Before I continue, I think it’s appropriate to give you a few disclaimers. I’d give the following blog post a PG-13 rating for some language and the use of adult cynicism. Secondly, there are probably scholars who have devoted a lot more of their lives to eschatology (study of the end of time) than me, and in writing this post, I have no desire to be considered an expert. I think it’s a safe bet, however, that if Jesus says, “I don’t freakin’ know when the end is coming,” -(Matthew 24:36, the Rick James Version) then we can probably say none of us are experts either.

In spite of the flak that Rob Bell has gotten, I think he has handled the subject of the last days and heaven really well. For those of you who don’t walk in Christian circles, Rob Bell is this preacher who recently wrote this “highly controversial” book called Love Wins, where he basically says God loves everyone. (Really rubs you the wrong way to think that God could do that, right?)

Rob’s basic view on heaven is this: heaven is not some far off place somewhere else that we all would like to “get to” when we die. The ideal of heaven is something that we should strive each day to bring here. Bell writes,

“So is it true that the kind of person you are doesn’t ultimately matter, as long as you’ve said or prayed or believed the right things? If you truly believed that, and you were surrounded by Christians who believed that, then you wouldn’t have much motivation to do anything about the present suffering of the world, because you would believe you were going to leave someday and go somewhere else to be with Jesus. If this understanding of the good news of Jesus prevailed among Christians, the belief that Jesus’s message is about how to get somewhere else, you could possibly end up with a world in which millions of people were starving, thirsty, and poor; the earth was being exploited and polluted; disease and despair were everywhere; and Christians weren’t known for doing much about it. If it got bad enough, you might even have people rejecting Jesus because of how his followers lived.

That would be tragic.” -(Bell, Love Wins, p6-7)

Kudos to you for making it through that paragraph, and in case you skipped it or you don’t pick up on satire, that’s exactly what many Christians have done. We have become so worried about being damned that we don’t give a damn. We don’t give a shit about poor people. We don’t give a shit about world hunger. We don’t give a shit about loving the people who hate us. We don’t give a shit that millions and millions of people are living in hell on earth already.

You know how I know we don’t give a shit?

Because if you’re a Christian reading this, you’re probably more upset about the fact that I said “shit” a few times than you are about poverty, hunger, people not loving their enemies, or the living hell people are experiencing right now. To you, I’d say this,

“Awake, O sleeper! Rise from the dead (the deadness of your futuristic, fluffy, floating, foe-hating, rule-following faith), and Christ will shine on you!” – (Paul, Ephesians 5:14)

We have made our faith so much about “getting” to heaven that we have forgotten Jesus cared about here and now more than there or then.

Jesus said things like, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on EARTH as it is in heaven.”

Jesus even talked about eternal life:

“Now this is eternal life – that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.” -John 17:3

I’m pretty sure we can know God, and know Jesus, right now. And here’s the thing with knowledge. As we come to know Jesus, we actually start to do some of the things that Jesus did. “Remember, to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know."(Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, p12).

Christians, Jesus didn’t come and die and give everything so that you and I could tell everyone else they were going to hell. That’s a pretty shitty story!

Jesus came to give life, and give life to the full (John 10:10). If more of us lived like that were true, I think people would start to see the real Jesus instead of this poser we’ve presented. Jesus actually gave a damn about our health, our finances, and our families. Jesus didn’t come to drop a bunch of rules on us, (Here’s a link where I preach on this same subject: www.wix.com/northridge/northridgejc/messages) Jesus came to transform and to change us into people who cared as much about life and living as he does. Jesus says we’re ambassadors, that we’re witnesses, that we are His Body in a world that needs Him. It’s our job to LIVE like it!

So here’s a thought. As 6PM comes and goes in your time zone, be grateful that God is not a god that is just waiting for the right moment to press the “Damn You” button. We have a God of love and grace, a God who desperately wants the church to step up and execute plan “A” because there is no plan “B.”

For those of you who aren’t following Jesus, please don’t get frightened and turn to the Jesus that a lot of these misguided prophets are presenting to you. That’s not Jesus. That’s manipulation.

On the other hand, there is a Jesus, the real Jesus, who had a whole lot to say about how we live this life now. This Jesus put it all on the line to bail you out of the hell you might be living in so that you could feel heaven, right here, right now. If you want to know that Jesus, let’s talk.

The end is near, but not the end of the world. This needs to be the end of us living in fear, living in blind expectation of an ethereal escape for the elite. In turn, this is the beginning of hope! This is the beginning of us bringing heaven to earth!