"The
End Is Near!"
by
Rev. Kimi Riegel
March 6, 2005
Hebrew Scriptures Ezekiel 38:19-23
19 "In My zeal and in My blazing wrath I declare that on that
day there will surely be a great earthquake in the
New Testament Mathew 24:3-14
"Tell us, when will these things happen, and
what will be the sign of Your R869
coming, and of the end of the age?" 4
And Jesus answered and said to them, "See to it that no one misleads you.
5
"For many will come in My name, saying, `I am the Christ,' and will mislead
many. 6
"You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened,
for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end.
7
"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and
in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. 8
"But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.
9 "Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and
you will be hated by all nations because of My name. 10
"At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate
one another. 11
"Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. 12
"Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold. 13
"But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. 14
"This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony
to all the nations, and then the end will come.
William Ellery Channing
I
do and I must reverence human nature – I know how it is despised; how it has
been oppressed, how civil and religious establishments have conspired to crush
it. I know its history. I shut my
eye on none of its weaknesses and crimes … But injured, trampled on, and scorned
as our nature is, I still turn to it with intense sympathy and strong hope.
I bless it for its kind affections, for its strong and tender love, I honor
it for its struggles against oppression for its growth and progress under the
weight of so many chains and prejudices, for its achievements in science and
art, and still more for its examples of heroic and saintly virtue .. and I thank
God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race.
Disasters and calamity
have always been a reason for humans to think that the end is coming.
After 9/11 the best selling series “Left Behind” sold millions of copies
of its newest release “The Remnant”. These fascinations with apocalypse are
not new they been around since Western religion was invented. “They appear first in the Jewish
Bible's books of Isaiah and Ezekiel. The books were edited in the 5th and 6th
centuries B.C., and secular scholars find an intimate connection between their
content and the horrors Jews faced at the time. In 586 B.C., after a brutal
siege, the
Judaism has to some extent left
these end time scenarios behind as they have been picked up with a vengeance
by the Christians. As we heard in
our New Testament reading predictions of the Second Coming began shortly after
Jesus’ death and continue today. The most
complete of these is found in the Book of Revelation a vivid description of
all that will come.” The book is usually attributed to John of Patmos and dated
around A.D. 95. John was responding to the horrific persecution of early Christians
under the Roman emperor Nero. (Among other things, he had them coated with pitch
and burned alive in his gardens.) The book incorporates the extravagantly harsh
yet finally hopeful scenarios now familiar to believers: the earthquakes and
plagues, the Four Horsemen and Seven Seals, the battle against the Antichrist,
Christ's 1,000-year earthly rule of peace and righteousness (called the Millennium).
And lyrically, these lines of Scripture: "Now I saw a new heaven and a
new earth... Then I, John, saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down
out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." John's
vision became the Bible's final book.”[2]
The problem with this book is its vagueness which has initiated a long history
of guessing when the end will come.
Fortunately most of these
end time fortune tellers have been inaccurate. Perhaps the most famous of those
was John Darby who in the 1800’s brought a new kind of eschatology moving the
ascension of the Christians to the beginning of the apocalypse thus saving them
from all the horror. This has remained the dominate understanding of the end
of time since. In fact it is understood
by many that the worse the world gets the better it is for Christians. The closer
we are to the end the more likely Christ is coming and they will be headed for
paradise. This creates in some an indifference to the world. In “The Remnant”,
a character remarks that "the world is a spent cartridge." In real
life, when televangelist Pat Robertson floated a presidential run in 1986, a
Much of this fervor had
cooled until 9/11 and the Tsunamis bring it all closer to reality again for
those who believe.
While it maybe hard to hear these
predictions and take those who make them seriously I have three points I would
like to make. You see we “thinking
people” as we like to consider ourselves, are not exempt from influence by these
end times thinking. First we are
not so different in our thinking and we have our own end time scenarios.
There is a certain similarity between our “whoa is the world”, “the end
is coming” cries and the Christian prophecy. We believe that the end will come
at least in part from environmental degradation which is only one of the indicators
for Christians. I have heard Unitarian Universalists say that they see a Third
World War on the horizon which again is just one of the Christian indicators.
All we lack is the hopeful Jesus descending. And in that realm I have
heard Unitarian Universalists say that at least after the environmental disaster
and destruction the earth will heal itself and it will be a better place.
Maybe those of us who recycle will be redeemed and return to rule the
earth! My point being that any of
us are subject to these end time predictions. We are all subject to the fear
and hopeless feelings that lead to predictions that things will soon be over.
We are all subject to thinking ourselves
superior to those who think differently and thus we are some how saved. While
it may be hard for some of us to get our minds around these predictions and
the people making them I would like us to consider how similar we are in our
own end time stories. How similar
we are in thinking we are superior to those who don’t think like us. We are
not exempt from the influences of calamity. We sound just like these Cassandras
and we feel just as righteous in our doomsday predictions.
My second point is probably one
you are more comfortable with, how we are different than these folks.
For me it stems from the reading of Channing.
I have an understanding of the world and humanity as not depraved, at
least not totally. I am after all
a Unitarian Universalist. I believe
with our Universalist ancestors that humanity is not doomed to an eternity in
hell no matter how it manifests evil in this world.
I don’t believe in a deity that put us here just to see how bad we can
get then destroy us. I would never
put any children I am responsible for into a situation just to see how much
trouble they could get into then punish them. It just doesn’t make logical sense.
We are the same as our eschatological
evangelical brothers and sisters when we throw up our hands and insist the world
is going to hell; when we resign ourselves to the end as we see it coming. We
are different then that particular variety of Christianity when we remember
humanity has the power to change and do good. We are more like the Christians
who believe humanity’s duty is to make the world and better place and love thy
neighbor rather than leave him or her to the anti-Christ.
My third point is that
I think this goes beyond religious debate when it enters into the arena of government.
As
my colleague Rev. McGee says, “The most dangerous belief of the more radical
of this apocalyptic movement is that they are being called by God to bring about
Armageddon itself.”[3]
Many people in our current government
are believers in these end times described in the Bible. Remember James Watt, President
Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? Remember how he told the U.S. Congress
that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return
of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "After the last tree is felled,
Christ will come back."[4]
This
is dangerous. Our current governmental
officials would not likely say something so blatantly apocalyptic but many of
them belong to faith traditions that promote this philosophy.
They might in some even unconscious way create events that lead to their
view of paradise.
It is my belief that these people in our government may be creating
or as least not preventing situations such as war in the Middle East
that are indicators of the Second coming. The rapture index dropped 4 points
when Bush was elected. I wonder
if this is this bad in the eyes of certain Christians because the rapture is
that much farther off or is this good thing because someone who they believe
supports their agenda is in office?
So in a truly paranoid way I do
believe that the extreme radical right certainly does pose a danger to our society,
and yet I believe we must not give in to this style of paranoia. We need to
understand who these people are and why they're doing what they're doing. I
intend to teach a course on the religious right in the very near future. For
though their ideology may be abhorrent to us, they have the right to express
their beliefs just as we do. Thus while I support their right to speak and I
applaud many of their humanitarian works I too will speak especially when I
feel they are being bigoted and exclusionary.
When we hear shouts that the apocalypse is coming and only those who
believe as they do will be spared we need to shout back that we don't have time
for the apocalypse. We have work to do, the work of healing the earth and each
other.
The best way to contradict this
way of thinking is to resist falling into the trap of demonizing them as a group
and instead work to strengthen our own liberal religious movement and our church.
Namaste.