‘End times’ madness
War in the Mideast has ignited a new wave of speculation about the “end times.”
Almost all of this is worthless and destructive garbage – worthless because there is no biblical base for it, destructive because it distracts us from our real mission.
Our mission, you know, is not to sit around idly speculating about the return of Jesus. Our mission is to follow Jesus’ commission to live holy lives and introduce others to the new way of being human that he offers us.
Instead, the usual suspects are stirring the pot of pernicious conspiracy theories – “Double, double, toil and trouble: Fire burn, and cauldron bubble” – all the while (not coincidentally) raking in the bucks in weekly offerings and potential book sales.
These are, in fact, the “end times” – and they have been since the birth of Jesus. His coming signals the end of the old age and the dawning of the new age, the end of the old order and the dawning of the new.
But are these the final days before “the end of the world”? Most likely not.
First of all, you should not find that phrase in your Bible. You may find it, though, in some mistranslations of Matthew 13:49 and 24:3, where it actually means “end of the age.” This is the age that the coming of Jesus brought to a close.
Jesus talked a lot about the new world order that he was inaugurating to replace the old world order. He called this new order the Reign of God, or the Kingdom of God. This new world order is the order of living in right relationship – loving God first and your neighbor as yourself.
This new way of living totally upends all other forms of social interaction, especially those based on hierarchy and domination of the many by the few.
Whereas, if you peek below the surface of “end times” prattle, you’ll see the old order unchanged, even unthreatened, by the coming of Jesus.
What about the book of Revelation? What about it? It’s not a timetable for anything, especially the Second Coming. It’s an appeal for Christians to reject the old age – called Babylon – and fully embrace the new age – called New Jerusalem.
In our time between the times, old age and new age overlap. Babylon and New Jerusalem exist side by side. You have a choice which way you live, which order of life you follow. Speculation about when Jesus will return is a distraction, and an evil one. You ought to live now in the new age, in the Reign of God.
That’s partly what the season of Advent is all about. It’s about preparing us to live in the new age. And to that extent, it is indeed a sign of the end times – the end of the old age and the dawning of the new, shown to us in the birth of a child in Bethlehem.