Luke 21:7-19, 25-28
December 2, 2012
They asked him,
“Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to
take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will
come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after
them.
“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do
not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not
follow immediately.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation,
and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various
places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs
from heaven.
“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you
and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you
will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give
you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your
defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of
your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed
even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some
of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of
your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls….
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and
the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of
the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is
coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they
will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now
when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because
your redemption is drawing near.”
I grew up going to Penguin hockey games. My father and
family were part of the original owners who brought the Penguins to Pittsburgh,
so I grew up with hockey in my veins. For years I went to virtually every home
hockey game. That ended when I became pastor here at Calvin Church because we
had too many meetings on weeknights, and the games went too late on weekends,
with me having to get up early on Sunday. Still, from my childhood till my mid-thirties
I went to most games.
During the 1980s one of my most enduring memories was
walking into the Civic (Mellon) Arena while hearing a woman in the background speaking
to everyone in a soft voice. She stood about thirty feet from the entrance,
wearing a wool coat with a belt, a knit hat, and gloves. Every game she would
say the same thing to people as they walked to the entrance. While pointing her
hands, fingertips together, at people as they walked by, she said in a flat
monotone, “Get in before it’s too late. There’s not much time. Get in before
it’s too late.”
She was so much a part of the background of the games
that I really didn’t give her much thought as I heard her, year after year,
saying the same things. She was much like the trumpet player playing shrill
renditions of the Penguins theme song or “Let’s Go Pens,” in the background; or
like the ticket takers or program givers. They were all just part of the
experience of going to a game.
Then, in the fall of 1988, she was no longer there. I didn’t
notice it at first, but she wasn’t at the games anymore. We wondered both what
happened to her and who she was. Then, in 1989, I read an article about her in
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Apparently she was a Christian who was caught up in End Times lore. She had
been convinced that the world was going to end in the fall of 1988, and saw it
as her mission to go to sporting events, concerts, and other Pittsburgh
functions to spread the word of Jesus’ imminent return. When her predictions
fell short, she quit. They interviewed her husband, and he talked about her
faith and convictions, and how disappointed she was when Jesus’ return didn’t
take place.
She was one of many people over the years I’ve come
across who have been certain that we are in the End Times, and who’s
predictions have turned out to be wrong. Predicting the Second Coming of Jesus
has been a huge obsession for Christians, despite the warnings of Scripture
that we cannot know or predict that time. In Matthew 23:36, Jesus says, “But about that day and hour no one knows,
neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” And in
Acts it says, “So when they had come
together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the
kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods
that the Father has set by his own authority’” (Acts 1:6-7).
Still, throughout Christian history people have been
predicting Jesus’ return with confidence. Just a year ago a radio evangelist
named Harold Camping predicted that Jesus would return on May 21, 2011. When
the return failed to materialize, he revised his prediction, saying that he had
done the math (based on biblical formulas) wrong. Instead, the return would
really happen on October 21, 2011. When no return occurred, Camping went
silent.
He’s not the first, and he won’t be the last, to make a
prediction that fails to come true. For example, do you remember Y2K? Many
people were in a panic prior to January 1, 2000 because of fears that a
computer glitch would usher in Jesus’ return. Prior to 2000, many computers
were built without the ability for their internal clocks to turn to the year
2000. They only went up to 1999. People were convinced that this failure would
lead computers worldwide to crash. People were so nervous about it that many
began to stockpile food and water in their basements, convinced that there
would be worldwide food shortages as the calamity of the world set the context
for Jesus to return. The only problem is that most computers upgraded, and the
ones that didn’t just kept operating anyway.
Do you remember 1984? Many people thought that some sort
of worldwide oppression would take place in that year, due to George Orwell’s
dystopian novel, 1984. For some
reason, many Christians thought that 1984 would be the year in which the United
Nations would take over the world and create a Big Brother world government. This
would be the precursor for the antichrist to come and usher in a New World
Order.
But the failed predictions of Jesus’ return go back waaay
before either of these two predictions. For example, there’s a television
evangelist named Jack Van Impe who appears locally every Sunday night at 11:30
p.m. He appears with his wife, Rexella, and the two of them consistently teach
that Jesus’ return is imminent. I’ve been tuning in, five minutes at a time,
for over fifteen years to listen to them. I kind of think of it as Christian
comedy because they are both so oddly compelling, charismatic, and off-base.
Tim LaHaye, the author of the Left Behind series, has been predicting the idea of the The Rapture
(an idea that is only vaguely biblical) for years. In the process his books
have insinuated that the combination of Democratic Party presidencies and the
United Nations are the precursors to the tribulations that are to precede
Jesus’ return. Thus, each time a Democrat is elected president, the suspicion
is that he is the antichrist. Certainly many believe that Barack Obama is the
antichrist.
Much of LaHaye’s beliefs are based on a previous book,
written in the 1970s, by Hal Lindsey, titled The Great Late Planet Earth. Lindsey used the book of Revelation to
predict that the Second Coming would happen soon after the turn of the century.
This bothered me tremendously at the time because I thought it was unfair. Why
couldn’t Jesus decide to return at some other date, rather than soon after I
had entered my forties—the peak years of whatever career I would be pursuing (I
thought).
Many denominations got their start through predictions of
Jesus’ return. The Jehovah’s Witnesses started early in the 20th
century started in part as a denomination of Christians eagerly awaiting
Christ’s return. The Seventh-Day Adventists were started as a denomination in
the hope of Jesus return on October 22nd, 1842.
We even have some local ties to a predicted return in the
1800s. George Rapp, the founder of the Harmonist movement that established the
town Calvin Presbyterian Church is actually in, Harmony. In 1804, he bought
thousands of acres from the Lutheran, Baron Dettmar Basse, to establish a
Christian community that anticipated Jesus’ return. He had been a charismatic,
blue-collar, lay preacher back in Germany with over 12,000 followers. The
Lutheran Church saw him as a bad influence, and kicked him out of the church.
They then began persecuting he and his followers. So in 1804 Rapp, along with
800 followers, came to Harmony to establish a new, perfect Christian community.
They sold their town fourteen years later, at ten times the price of purchase,
to a community of Mennonites moving from the Lehigh Valley.
Rapp moved the community to Harmony Indiana, and ten
years later to the Beaver Valley where they founded Old Economy. Rapp predicted
that Jesus would return on September 15, 1829, and he lost half of his
followers when that prediction failed to come true.
Prior to Rapp, many during the Reformation thought Jesus’
return was imminent. They thought that the pope was the antichrist, the Roman
Catholic Church was Babylon, and that they were the saved ones. At the turn of
the first millennium, in 1000, many monks and religious people committed
suicide because they were so certain that they were about to enter into the
troubling times of the Jesus’ return. The early church often talked about Jesus’
return. In fact, parts of Paul’s epistles were written as reassurances to a
second generation of Christians that they would experience Christ’s return.
Why have so many people been wrong about Jesus’ return,
and why do people still persist in believing they can figure it out? I’ll give
you two basic reasons. The first is what I call the Biblical Reason. The fact is that the Bible has said that
Jesus would return. Our passage for today says so. There is a fancy world that
theologians give to the idea of Jesus returning. They call it the parousia. The concern over Jesus’
failure to return is called “the delay of the parousia.” The “biblical reason”
for people obsessing about Jesus’ return has to do with the fact that many
people want to be biblical in their lives, and they want to really be grounded
in biblical thinking and living. So, if the Bible says it will happen, they
want to see it happen. Their constant hope causes them to look at events around
them and wonder, “Is this the Bible coming true?”
Another reason is what I call the ”My Times and the World’s a Mess” Reason. Basically, a lot of
people believe that we must be in the End Times simply because they are alive.
And because they are alive, it must be the most important period of history,…
because they are living in it. Why else would God create them if they weren’t
the most important people living in the most important times of history? The
reasoning goes like this: “I’m living in the most important period in history
because I’m alive and I’m a witness to the most important time in history. God
put me here to be a part of it because I’m the center. I may not be a world
leader, but I’m vitally important. All those others before me were wrong
because they didn’t have my insight, knowledge, and spiritual bearing. If I
believe all of this is true, it must be because God has led me to believe it.”
What gives them certainty about this is that they look around the world and see
that the world is a mess, and therefore this mess must be the predicted tribulations.
They see the world as being in the worst shape it’s ever been in.
The irony is that the world is actually in better shape
than it’s ever been in. Just as one example, there are fewer wars taking place
now then ever, and the wars that are taking place have much less severity. Just
look at the wars we’ve been involved in over the past eleven years. According
to the Washington Post, we have had 4474
deaths in Iraq and 2138 in Afghanistan. These are tragic and devastating for so many. But compare this
to the Vietnam War, where, according to Wikipedia, there were 58,282 American
deaths. In World War II, there were 417,000 American deaths, but almost 70
deaths worldwide. There are fewer wars today, and the ones that do exist have
minimal death and damage compared to those from thirty to sixty years before.
So what happened?
Why hasn’t Jesus returned as he promised? I have one reason that I’m
going to withhold for two weeks, which I’ll explain to you my sermon then. But there
is another reason—one that has to do with our lack of understanding of the
Bible. Do you remember how I’ve often talked about the difference between eisogesis and exegesis? To refresh your memory, eisogesis means “reading into” the Bible our own agendas and
beliefs. We read the Bible to fit it into our already held perspectives. It
assumes that even though the Bible was written 2000+ years earlier, it must be
really talking about today and what we’re experiencing today. So, I read into
it an interpretation of today. Because people who engage in eisogesis don’t really know as much
about the Bible as they think they do, their ignorance allows them to believe
that their interpretations are correct.
Exegesis is
different. When we engage in exegesis, we
try to understand the Bible in terms of its context: Who wrote the passage? Why
did she or he write it? What was going on at the time? Who was it written to,
and what was the issue being addressed? What was going on at the time socially,
economically, politically, and culturally? How do we take all of that into
account and then apply it to our times? How do we respect the Bible in its own
context, and then understand it in terms of our times.
If we engage in eisogesis,
then predictions of the end times are easily made because we “read into”
the Bible our present circumstances and beliefs. On the other hand, if we
engage in exegesis we have to ask,
“What was the writer of our passage trying to say, and what was the person
writing the book of “Revelation” trying to say IN THEIR TIMES?
To answer this question, the first thing you have to do
is understand the nature of “Apocalyptic” writings. When you think of the term
“apocalypse,” what do you think it means? Your answer is probably an example of
eisogesis. I’ll bet you thought it
meant something along the lines of “catastrophe,” or “destruction.” That’s not
at all what it means. The term “apocalypse” comes from the Greek word “ἀποκάλυψις,”
or “apocalupsis.” It simply means “revelation.” So, the “Apocalypse of John,”
as the book of Revelation is called, simply means “The Revelation of John.” It
means that John was given a revelation from God about his times, and he is
sharing it with others.
Apocalyptic writing is an actual style of writing that
employs a code. It is a style of writing done to give hope to those under
oppression who want to hide what they are saying so that the governing powers
can’t decipher what they are saying.
John’s Apocalypse is not the only “apocalypse.” The Bible
has several other books that are “apocalyptic” or “revelatory.” The books of
Daniel and Exekiel are examples of apocalyptic writings. They were written to
give hope to Jews under foreign oppression.
Can you guess which foreign power was ruling and
oppressing them? If you said Babylon, that would be a good guess. It would be
wrong, but it would be a good guess, especially since both deal with Jews under
Babylonian exile. Daniel and Ezekiel were actually written while Israel was
under Greek rule. Here’s the thing about apocalyptic writing. It says things in
code so that the oppressors won’t understand what’s being said. Daniel and
Exekiel were talking about the eventual fall of the Greek powers, but they
couldn’t actually say that the Greeks were going to fall. So they use the
Babylonians, a fallen power, as their metaphors. By having Daniel interpret a
dream by Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of Babylon, they could sneakily predict for
Jews the fall of the Greeks, and the Greek ruling powers would never suspect
it.
Our passage for today is written to early Christians who
were under Roman oppression. It was a passage of hope saying to them, “yes,
things are bad, but Jesus will be returning to overturn Roman oppression. Just
hold on. Keep your faith. Don’t give up.”
To me it’s reminiscent of something that took place in
Paris during World War II. In 1943, at the height of Nazi occupation of Paris,
this appeared in the Paris Newspaper, Paris-Soir:
Love and admire
Chancellor Hitler
Eternal
England is unworthy to live.
Curse,
curse to the ground the people across the seas.
The
Nazis will be the only one on earth to survive.
Let
us then support the German Fuhrer,
The
navigators will end the odyssey,
To
them alone belongs a just punishment;
The
palm branch of the victor awaits the Swastika.
You can’t mistake its meaning, can you? It’s a
pro-Hitler, pro-Nazi ditty. That’s true only if you engage in eisogesis, interpreting it in terms of
what you think it’s about. If you engage in some exegesis, trying to figure out why it was written and how, you come
to a completely different message. It is an anti-Nazi passage. But to see how,
you have to know the code. If you take it in its original French and divide it
down the middle, you get a two-column passage, saying,
Love and
admire Chancellor
Hitler
eternal
England. is
unworthy to live.
Curse,
curse to the ground The people
across the seas
The Nazis. will be
the only one on earth to survive.
Let us then
support The German
Fuhrer
the
navigators will
end the odyssey.
To them
alone belongs A just
punishment
The palm
branch of the victor. awaits the
Swastika.
Just as this poem was a coded passage of hope for the
oppressed, our passage for this morning is a passage for the oppressed
Christians of Luke’s time, giving them a sense of hope during bad times. When
Luke wrote it, Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Roman general Pompey,
leaving only what is now the Wailing Wall. People were under Roman oppression,
but our passage gave them hope. And it gives us hope today because it passes
along a message.
The message isn’t necessarily telling us that Jesus is on
the verge of returning (he may be, and I easily admit I could be wrong).
Instead, it is telling us that no matter what’s happening in our lives, we need
to have hope in Christ. We need to believe that a spark is shining, no matter
how dark things in our lives seem to be.
So when will Christ return? I believe he already has
returned, but I’ll let you wait a couple of weeks to find out about that.
Amen.
