Tag Archives: Doomsday

Chapter-a-Day

Perhaps Today…Likely Not

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https://open.spotify.com/episode/4r3105rfBwwme5Q9qj9Arz?si=2LTRTdYoQW-FL9RyIgeObg

Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
2 Peter 3:17-18 (NIV)

Along the journey I continually find spiritual truth hiding in plain sight in the most unexpected of places.

The subject of AI is everywhere right now. Yesterday morning in our daily perusal of the news, Wendy and I read an article in the Free Press in which various thinkers gave their personal takes on AI. Wendy and I were both struck by these words from Eric Markowitz:

Over the last few hundred years, we began to see ourselves as separate from the natural world—masters of it, rather than participants in it. We built systems that prize speed above all else, and in doing so we lost the most fundamental lesson that nature teaches: Speed of growth makes you fragile. The tree that shoots up fastest is the first to fall in a storm. The ecosystems that endure—the ones that survive fire and drought and ice—are the ones that grew slowly, developed deep root systems, and built interdependence with the living things around them.

In today’s chapter, Peter confronts a burning issue of his day, and one that remains. Jesus promised His return. He promised a Day of Judgement. Even though He told His followers that “no one knows the day or hour” — that even He didn’t know when it would be, they were convinced that it was imminent. They expected it to be quick — in their lifetime.

The result was scoffers, doubters, and mockers.

“He’s obviously not coming. The whole things a sham. I may as well live however I want.”

What a very modern sentiment.

That’s the anthem of materialism. The creed of consumer culture. If there’s no reckoning, then indulge. If there’s no ending, then accumulate.

Peter whispers back: You mistake patience for absence.

Peter approaches this attitude head-on as he wraps up his second letter. He responds with three sweeping movements:

  1. God has acted before.
    The world was formed by God’s word. The flood came by that same word. History is not random. It bends to a Voice.
  2. God’s delay is not forgetfulness.
    “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years.” The delay is mercy. God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish.
  3. The Day of the Lord will come.
    Like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar. Elements will be laid bare. A new heaven and a new earth will emerge — “the home of righteousness.”

And then the piercing question:

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of person ought I be?

He ends with the same admonition as Mr. Markowitz in response to the current doomsday predictions of AI destroying our world.

Grow.

Take a deep breath. Cultivate a life rooted in Word and Spirit. Sink deep where Living Water nourishes unseen. Reach wide into the Light. Grow slow enough to withstand the storm, and to bear fruit in increasing measure.

Jesus is coming.
AI might destroy the world — if you read the headlines.

I find it fascinating how humanity gets enamored with doomsday scenarios. Fear motivates. Media knows it creates clicks and views — it sells books.

As a disciple of Jesus I believe Jesus is coming.

Perhaps today.

Likely not.

As a human I know that I will die one day.

Perhaps today.

Likely not.

What I do know is that the sun is rising on this, another day of my earthly journey. I get to choose how I will live, think, speak, act, and relate to others.

No matter how far I get in the journey, it’s always a good day to grow. Growth is not passive. Roots deepen because they push through resistance.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
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Chapter-a-Day

The Divergent Paths of Fear and Faith

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“Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?”
Numbers 14:3 (NIV)

As a purely base human instinct for survival, fear is essential. Our brains react to situations instinctively to warn us and cause us to be cautious of or to flee potentially fatal dangers. As a disciple of Jesus, I have found that the spiritual journey requires the development of faith that overcomes fear. Fear is the enemy of faith. Where Jesus leads me is away from the fear of death. In fact, where Jesus leads, I walk into death as He did, believing what He asked the sister of Lazarus to believe:

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”

Today’s chapter is one of the most crucial waypoints in the Great Story. Having quickly reached the Promised Land, the Hebrew tribes are at a point of decision. Will they have faith that the God who miraculously delivered them from Pharaoh and 400 years of slavery will also deliver to them the land He’s been promising all along, or will they now refuse to go where He is leading them?

I found an interesting pattern emerge from the story starting in yesterday’s chapter and continuing into today’s fateful moment of decision.

It begins with fear, expressed in the spies report back to Moses:

“But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there.”

As the fear grew, it led the spies to exaggerate, lie, and deceive the people as they spread false claims:

“But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

The fear, fueled by deception, leads the people to doubt and a presumption:

“Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. “

They don’t know this negative outcome is going to happen, but their fear has led them to believe it. Fear has led to a kind of shadow faith, the firm belief in their pessimistic presumptions.

As a confirmed pessimist, I know this road to presumption really well. I’ve trodden its path many times on this earthly journey. In fact, I can see it play out constantly in the doomsday predictions that come from both sides of the political aisle as well as conspiratorial groups that are ever with us. As Wendy and I sit over breakfast every morning and read through the news, not a day goes by that there isn’t at least one headline proclaiming some kind of doomsday scenario. I’ve observed that not only is fear a base human instinct, but its also both contagious and creates reactive responses. Among those active responses is clicking on the doomsday articles to find out how we’re all going to die, which makes media outlets money, which is why they love printing doomsday articles.

The spies fear led to deceptive exaggeration that spread their fears like contagion throughout the Hebrew camp, leading to a reactive uprising against Moses and Aaron, along with the threat to murder Joshua and Caleb for even suggesting that they enter the Promised Land. I see that same pattern happen over and over again in our own world.

Fear —> Exaggeration/Deception —> Presumption —> Reaction

In the quiet this morning, I find God’s Spirit reminding me of all the ways that Jesus called me to live by faith, not fear. All of the ways He calls me to respond with faith rather than reacting to fear. All of the ways He tells me that God’s Spirit leads to a place where my flesh instinct to fear death must give way to an understanding that the path to Life leads through death to the Resurrection.

Like the Hebrews camped outside the Promised Land, if I’m afraid to have faith that following Jesus where He is leading me will ultimately lead to Life, then I will find my fear leading me to all sorts of deadly presumptions this side of the eternal Promised Land.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Promotional graphic for Tom Vander Well's Wayfarer blog and podcast, featuring icons of various podcast platforms with a photo of Tom Vander Well.
These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

Trust the Story

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Trust the Story (CaD Ezk 17) – Wayfarer

“‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain.’”
Ezekiel 17:22 (NIV)

As I write this, the 2024 Presidential election is 47 days away. Yesterday morning, Wendy and I found ourselves finding other news to read. We are so tired of reading about the election and the prognostications about what will or won’t happen if one candidate or the other wins. There’s also the daily clairvoyant journalistic pieces about our enemies and what they must be thinking and preparing for should one candidate or the other win. It reminds me of 2004 when The Guardian published a piece about official predictions that in less than 20 years major European cities will drown under rising seas and Britain will become a Siberian-like climate. Well, it’s now 2024.

Editors know fortune telling and doomsday predictions always make good click-bait.

The political intrigue is, of course, real. Nations and empires are always posturing and looking out for their own interests. This has always been true in human history. Ezekiel’s prophetic message in today’s chapter is predicated on it.

Jerusalem and the nation of Judah happened to lie right at the crossroads between empires. Egypt to the southwest, Babylon and Assyria to the northeast, and the infant Greek and Roman empires soon to be birthed to the northwest. Empires, of course, compete with one another in a global game of King of the Mountain to control the most territory and wealth. As Ezekiel is writing the two super powers are Babylon and Egypt. Babylon has the upper-hand and Jerusalem is a vassal state of the Babylonian empire with a treaty to be loyal subjects.

The king in Jerusalem is a man named Zedekiah. He’s playing political poker and has gone all-in with Egypt, breaking his treaty with Babylon. Interesting to note that some scholars claim that treaties like that between the king of Babylon and the King of Judah were vows made to their respective deities, such as, “May my Lord slay me if I break this treaty.”

What’s fascinating about Ezekiel and the other prophets of his day, is that God is spiritually at work behind the scenes of the history taking place. The book of Daniel makes it clear that God is at work in the person of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar. God is taking an intimate interest in the individuals and the empires.

In today’s chapter, Zeke’s message is an allegory addressing Zedekiah’s betrayal of his treaty with Nebuchadnezzar. God takes Zed’s betrayal personally and considers that Zed had broken a covenant with God himself, lending credence to the notion that when he swore an oath of loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar it was an oath made to the Lord. Once again, Zeke is delivering bad news. Jerusalem and Zedekiah will pay the consequences for Zedekiah’s bad gamble.

For the second chapter in a row, however, Zeke’s message ends with a Messianic prophecy of hope. God declares that He Himself will plant a sprig on top of the mountains of Israel that will grow into a proverbial Tree of Life. It’s branches will bear fruit (sound familiar?) and “bird of every kind” will nest in it and find shelter in its branches.

As a disciple of Jesus, I once again find in Ezekiel’s prophetic message some comfort in our own crazy political climate. I do believe that all of human history is part of the ebb and flow of the Great Story that God has authored from Genesis to Revelation. I do believe as a disciple of Jesus that my citizenship is ultimately in God’s Kingdom, and that I have a responsibility on this earthly journey to respect the human authority under which I reside. I’m called to honorably live and participate as a citizen. If I really believe what I say I believe, then I can trust that no matter what happens 47 days from now it is part of the Story.

I trust the Story.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

The Whole Crowd

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The Whole Crowd (CaD Ezk 7) – Wayfarer

“‘They have blown the trumpet,
    they have made all things ready,
but no one will go into battle,
    for my wrath is on the whole crowd.”
Ezekiel 7:14 (NIV)

It was about 25 years ago that I first heard of the “2G” principle of investing. I was speaking with one of the executives of a client of ours. This individual was not only in a high-paying position but also came from a very wealthy family and had an apocalyptic view of where current events were taking us. It was around the time of Y2K when many believed that all of the world’s computers would stop working when the date changed from 1999 to 2000. There was a lot of fear being stirred up, and my client told me they had switched their investing to the “2G” principle: Gold and Guns. Gold because when you don’t have an electronic record of the money in your accounts, then the only tangible currency is precious metals. Guns because when society breaks down like Lord of the Flies those with guns will be more likely able to protect themselves and their loved ones and survive.

Over the years, I’ve known others who have adopted the 2G investment strategy. As a natural pessimist, I certainly get the logic and the appeal of preparing for a doomsday scenario. If I had a lot of money to invest I might be more tempted to join them, but I don’t so I’m hoping that doomsday’s imminent threat will fizzle out like Y2K.

For the people of Ezekiel’s day, the prophecies of imminent doom were more tangible. The region was at a crossroads, smack dab in the middle of multiple empires, both established and emerging. The Assyrians and already decimated the area and the Babylonians were currently holding sway. Ezekiel was preaching to his people living in exile, so they’d already experienced their own version of doomsday. Ezekiel’s messages proclaimed that there was more, and worse, to come for his people.

Throughout history, those who are rich have a greater chance of riding out doomsday scenarios like war and famine. The 2G investment principle is predicated on it. What’s fascinating about God’s message through Ezekiel in today’s chapter is both his audience and his message. When the Babylonians took Zeke and others into exile, they took the best and the brightest, the rich and the powerful. It was a shrewd strategy. King Nebuchadnezzar knew that rebellion in vassal states required intelligence, power, and money. By bringing the educated, powerful, and wealthy back to Babylon, he reduced the chance that those left in Jerusalem would rebel while giving him and his people access to some of the greatest minds among his enemies from which he and his people would benefit.

One of the overarching themes in Zeke’s message was that God’s judgment was going to fall on “the whole crowd.” Rich and poor, educated and uneducated, white collar and blue collar, urbanites and farmers, there wasn’t a demographic who was going to escape the doomsday that was coming. For the 2G-type investors of their day, Ezekiel writes:

“‘They will throw their silver into the streets,
    and their gold will be treated as a thing unclean.
Their silver and gold
    will not be able to deliver them
    in the day of the Lord’s wrath.
It will not satisfy their hunger
    or fill their stomachs,
    for it has caused them to stumble into sin.”

In a few minutes, I will sit down with Wendy to have our coffee and peruse the headlines over breakfast. There’s a lot of talk about World War III and various doomsday scenarios. Both sides of the political aisle like to whip up a frenzy of fear about doomsday scenarios should their opponents win in November. It’s the same every four years.

As I meditate on these things this morning, I am also mindful of the reality that history is marked by dark periods. We are certainly not immune from bad things happening and having to live through periods of intense difficulty. As a disciple of Jesus, however, I find that His teaching was consistently about faith, contentment, and trust. He repeatedly tells me not to worry, not to be anxious, and not to be afraid. The doomsday that Ezekiel proclaimed happened just as predicted. Jerusalem was besieged and people starved before the entire city was destroyed and burned along with Solomon’s temple. But I also know the end of the story. God’s promises to the exiles were also fulfilled. They returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple.

In the same way, I know the end of the Great Story. After a period of intense doom, there is a new beginning of Light, and Love, and Life. The further I get in my spiritual journey, the more I’ve come to realize that being a disciple of Jesus is about letting go of my fear, anxiety, and worry about the former while embracing my whole-hearted faith in the latter.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Book Summary List

Revelation (Jun-Jul 2022)

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Each photo below corresponds to the chapter-a-day post for the book of Revelation published by Tom Vander Well in June and July of 2022. Click on the photo linked to each chapter to read the post.

Revelations 1: The Rabbit-Hole and the Three Questions

Revelations 2: Hearing the Simple Message

Revelations 3: Spiritual Self-Exam

Revelations 4: Crowns and Surrender

Revelations 5: The Alpha Point and the Omega Point

Revelations 6: “What Do You Expect?”

Revelations 7: “Every Nation, Tribe, People, & Language”

Revelations 8: Ignorant, Mindful, & Ready

Revelations 9: “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking”

Revelations 10: Justice

Revelations 11: Prophetic Pondering

Revelations 12: Not of this World

Revelations 13: My Choice

Revelations 14: Wisdom to Know the Difference

Revelations 15: The Bigger Picture
Revelations 16: Love and Justice

Revelations 17: Rogues Gallery

Revelations 18: The Funeral

Revelations 19: The Wedding

Revelations 20: The Books

Revelations 21: Death-to-Life

Revelations 22: The End is the Beginning

Chapter-a-Day

Ignorant, Mindful, and Ready

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Ignorant, Mindful, and Ready (CaD Rev 8) – Wayfarer

The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand.
Revelation 8:4 (NIV)

As a student of history and as a mindful observer of life, I have noted that followers of Jesus in every generation seem to be convinced that we are in the end times. This is not the first time I’ve mentioned it on this chapter-a-day journey. It seems to me that as human beings age and we feel our own sense of dread with the inevitable approach of “the end” of our own earthly journey, it is easy to project this sense of “the end” on the world around us.

As a young man, I read books that predicted the world wouldn’t last beyond my high school years. Since I graduated high school in 1984, many would-be prophets mingled Orwell and Revelation in predicting doomsday. I seem to remember televangelists predicting the date of the rapture and the beginning of the end on more than one occasion. Then came the doomsday scenarios of the end of the 20th century that mingled the apocalypse with the Y2K global computer meltdown (history shows that apocalyptic predictions spring up at the end of centuries like flowers in spring). More recently, we had the end of the Mayan calendar that people associated with the end of all things.

With this in mind, I want to be careful with my thoughts on today’s chapter. I don’t want you to read what I’m not writing.

In today’s chapter, John’s vision from God’s throne room in heaven continues. When the seventh seal on the scroll is broken there is a dramatic pause, thirty minutes of silence before the next round of judgments on the earth begin. The prayers of God’s people rise as incense before God’s throne. Recall the cries of those who’d been martyred in chapter six: “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”

I always have to remember as I read the Great Story that God layers life with certain themes. Just a few weeks ago in a Message among my local gathering of Jesus followers, I gave the example of how the diagram of an atom looks like a little solar system. The moon revolving around the earth, the planets revolving around the sun, and our solar system in the galaxy continue to expand this layered motif outward into the expanding universe. God is an artist, and he layers themes and motifs in both creation and in the Great Story.

The prayers and cries of the martyrs (those believers through history who were tortured and killed because of their faith) echo God hearing the prayers of God’s people enslaved in Egypt (Ex 3:7). The judgments and plagues in today’s chapter and subsequent chapters echo the plagues on Egypt. God’s deliverance of humanity from the shackles of a fallen world ruled by evil as we read it in the book of Revelation is a macrocosm of the story of God delivering His people from Egypt.

As the angels blow their trumpets of judgment in today’s chapter, plagues fall on the earth. The hail mixed with blood echoes the ninth plague on Egypt. The sea turned to blood echoes the first Egyptian plague. The waters turning bitter in the third trumpet are the reverse of God turning the bitter waters sweet at Marah for the Hebrews. The fourth trumpet echoes the ninth plague on Egypt.

I couldn’t help but notice that the consequences of the trumpet plagues are largely disruptions of nature which will disrupt commerce which in turn will wreak havoc on the global supply chain, which will only fuel economic and international strife, which will only fuel the works of the four riders of the apocalypse that have already been loosed: conquest, war, violence, famine, and death.

Disruption of supply chains, disruptions caused by war, supply shortages, famine, inflation, economic disruption, anger, violence: sound familiar? Yes, I can’t help but see the current events around me and think to myself how quickly things can spiral and descend in an out-of-control chain of events around the globe.

And this is where I don’t want you to read what I’m not writing. I’m not saying we are in the end times. I continue to maintain, as Jesus taught, that no one knows the day and the hour. I’m determined to cling to this ignorance. I can, however, read today’s chapter, look at current events, and appreciate how cataclysmic events like a global pandemic, natural disasters, wars, and famines can quickly destabilize the entire world as is described in the “Trumpet Judgments” in today’s chapter. And while Jesus said that I don’t know the hour and the day, He told multiple parables in which He encouraged His followers to be alert and to always be ready for the end to arrive.

And so, I enter today mindful and endeavoring to be ready, come what may in my own lifetime.

Note: Four recent messages were added to the Messages page today, an archive of YouTube and MP3 fiiles of messages.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Grab Your Bug-Out Bag!

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“Gather up your bundle from the ground,
    O you who live under siege!
For thus says the Lord:
I am going to sling out the inhabitants of the land
    at this time….”
Jeremiah 10:17-18 (NRSVCE)

Among the sub-culture of the “wild-at-heart” man’s man is a thing known as a bug-out bag. There was a lot of buzz about it among some of the guys in my circles a few years back. The bug-out bag is a single duffle or backpack (you have to be able to carry it) that contains what you need to survive should nuclear war, EMP grid blackout, Zombie apocalypse, or other kind of Mad Max or Hunger Games type dystopia become a sudden reality. The bug-out bag contains things you need to survive like water, food, and the means to create shelter. Oh, and a weapon to kill Zombies or hunt down your next meal is always a wise choice. For the record, I don’t have a bug-out bag so I guess Wendy and I are screwed should any of the aforementioned events transpire.

Life in Jeremiah’s day was infinitely more precarious that the one we live in today. As a human being you’d be fortunate to survive infancy, and if you did survive into your teens you could expect the average life-span to be around 30 years. Disease, famine, and local wars were a constant threat. At that time in history local city-states and tribal kingdoms were being swallowed up by rapidly growing regional empires who had begun to perfect their tactics of military aggression, siege warfare, and political assimilation. The Assyrian and Babylonian empires were chief among them.

Jeremiah’s broken-record prophesies were not really that crazy to the people of his day. The Assyrians and Babylonians had a reputation for ruthlessness that was well-known and well deserved. Assyria had already destroyed their cousins in the northern kingdom of Israel (Jerusalem was part of the southern kingdom of Judah). The prevailing tactic of regional Empires was to take over the city, plunder anything valuable, kill the leaders and take the best and brightest hostage (FYI: Daniel was one of these). So, when Jeremiah wrote in today’s chapter that the people of Jerusalem should grab their bug-out bags, they knew what he was talking about (and it wasn’t a Zombie apocalypse).

For those reading along with this chapter-a-day journey, it should also be noted that Jerusalem had been attacked just a generation before by the Assyrians. In that day the Jerusalem was miraculously spared as the enemy army was mysteriously wiped out overnight (2 Kings 19). This, of course, made Jeremiah’s prophetic task more difficult. The people of Jeremiah’s day believed that God would miraculously save them just as He had done before.

This morning I’m thinking about all the doomsday predictions I’ve heard across my lifetime. From Christian teachers and their mesmerizing interpretations of Revelation to economists warning of global monetary collapse to environmentalists warning of a coming ice age (that was the prediction I heard in elementary school) or global warming meltdown. With the proliferation of voices via the internet there is no lack of fear-inducing doomsday predictions to go around. It’s easy to fall down the rabbit-hole of fear.

When confronted with doomsday predictions I find myself trying to be discerning. I can’t do anything about the timing of events in Revelation so I might as well focus each day on loving others as Jesus calls me to do and not worry about that which I can’t control. I believe God calls us to care for the Earth, so Wendy and I try to be good stewards of natural resources, recycle, and make wise choices for the sake of the environment whenever we can. Yet, once again, there is only so much I can do on a personal level and what will be is out of my control. It seems a waste of mental and emotional energy to live in perpetual fear of that which I don’t know and can’t control.

I confess, however, that the notion of having a bug-out bag (with a compass and one of those giant Rambo-like survival knives) does stir my manly spirit. “Arrrggghh!”

Chapter-a-Day

Reckoning

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“Your own conduct and actions
    have brought this on you.
This is your punishment.
    How bitter it is!
    How it pierces to the heart!”
Jeremiah 4:18 (NIV)

Reckoning is word we don’t use very often any more. It is the the process of settling accounts. It is the day that the bill comes due. Metaphorically used, a “day of reckoning” may not have anything to do with money. It’s when our actions come to their natural conclusion.

On a national level, I’ve been hearing economic prophets crying in the wilderness about a “day of reckoning” for as long as I can remember. We spend more than we take in. The U.S. national debt was at 20 trillion dollars and growing when I looked at it this morning. Every bill our congress passes has a host of pork barrel riders and appropriations (often called “earmarks”) for spending money on pet local projects our lawmakers have promised to the people who’ve lined their pockets back home. The President has no line-item veto so if he wants credit for the main bill he has to quietly put up with all of the quiet little pork barrel projects no one talks about. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. Say no more. This is not a political issue, by the way. This is a systemic issue. Everyone does it on both sides of the aisle. Making hard choices won’t get you re-elected, so we continue our game of cost-shifting. How long can it go on? [cue: the economic doomsday prophets]

On a personal level, I make daily choices that impact my health, my relationships, and my physical, social, and economic well-being. Eventually, there will be a day of reckoning when my seemingly insignificant choices will come to their natural conclusions.

It is very human to cry “Why me?” when the shit hits the fan. Yet along life’s journey I’ve discovered that the answer to that question isn’t usually as elusive as I’d like to pretend. If I turn around and look at the choices I’ve made and the steps I’ve taken across my journey, I can usually see the path of seemingly small, insignificant choices that have led me to this place. I have no one to blame but myself. But, blame-shifting is as common to the human condition as cost-shifting. I’ve observed along my journey that God often gets the blame when we humans adroitly employ our penchant for blame-shifting.

In today’s chapter, Jeremiah is poetically prophesying doomsday scenarios for his nation. Anticipating the eventual blame-shifting the people will employ on the day of reckoning, he reminds them that on that day it will have been their own choices that will have brought them to that place.

This morning I’m thinking about my own life, my own choices, and my own circumstances. Another word we don’t use very often is “repentance.” The original meaning is a word picture of turning around and moving in the opposite direction. Each day represents an opportunity for me to turn away from foolish choices and to start making wise ones. Every day affords the opportunity to change my day of reckoning from a doomsday scenario to that of blessing.

I hear the whisper of my mother’s voice…or is it Holy Spirit?

“Make good choices today.”

Have a good day, my friends.

Chapter-a-Day

It’ll Pan Out in the End

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The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name.

Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles.
Zechariah 14:9, 16 (NIV)

One can’t journey through the totality of God’s Message without running into prophetic messages of the end of things as we know them, though it is important to note that the idea of there being an “end” is a misnomer because God consistently speaks of “new” beginnings. “Old things pass away, new things come” aptly describes one of God’s core message to us throughout the Great Story.

Even in creation of all that we know, the process of death and life is ever-present. Science tells us that the totality of this expanding, living universe is made up of energy that takes on different forms and phases. When solid matter dies and decays it is converted to a different kind of energy that, in turn, feeds other systems. We bury or burn a dead body, it decays, biodegrades or is consumed and the ecosystem uses the converted energy to feed the system in other ways.

The book of Revelation, which we often think of as describing “the end” because it reveals a chaotic time of pain and suffering. But the book actually ends with comfort, peace, joy, and  new life in a new beginning:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Revelation 21:1 (NIV)

Today’s final chapter of Zechariah follows the exact same pattern. There is a period of intense conflict and suffering followed by a new reality under a sovereign God who calls everyone to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was an annual harvest feast. Think about it, harvest is that time of year when all that has been sown, cultivated, watered, tended, and pruned is finally harvested. In other words, as plants reach the end of their life-cycle we chop it down and gather it so that it, in turn, will feed everyone (its solid matter changed to a different kind of energy in our digestive systems) and perpetuate life.

Along my life journey I have studied many different theories on the mysterious prophetic texts of the Bible. One thing that I’ve come to learn about prophetic imagery is that it is easy to find in all the mysterious images and metaphors all kinds of things that spark endless theories and debates, which often turn into feuds, which separate people into various opposing camps. Reading today’s chapter I can understand how the Jewish scholars in Jesus’ day were looking for a Messiah to show up on the scene, wipe out the evil Romans, and usher them into global power. It’s what Zac seems to be describing in today’s chapter. However, the Messiah described in the previous chapters is gentle, riding on a donkey, suffering betrayal and death.

What a mysterious contradiction.

This morning in the quiet I’m mulling over some basic beliefs and world views about where our world is headed. Some contend that humanity is essentially good and, despite our penchant for focusing on all that is bad and negative, our world and humanity is slowly getting better and better and moving in designed progression towards the joy, peace, goodness and life described in the final chapter of Revelation among other visions of utopia. Others believe that humanity is essentially flawed and things are only going to get worse and worse until in the final depth of darkness and doom God will show up and save the day. I find it fascinating to observe that friends who occupy both schools of thought are given to doomsday thinking and dire doomsday proclamations depending on the circumstances they see around themselves and their belief (though not knowledge) of where it is leading.

As I make my way through this life journey I find myself increasingly and humbly relinquishing any sense of surety with regard to prophetic versions of the end times. I think of one Christian scholar who was confronted with an either-or question about the Book of Revelation regarding three major theories of the return of Christ. He was asked whether he believed in the pre-tribulation rapture, mid-tribulation rapture, or post-tribulation rapture. Realizing that the question was intended to pigeon-hole him for the questioner’s judgement, the scholar refused to be trapped into the either-or debate and responded, “I’m a pan-tribulationist. I believe it’s all going to pan out in the end.”

I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or in that murky, vague period we see in the future and have dubbed the “end times.” I’m not sure even my speculation profits me or anyone else very much. I do know that we live in an intricately ordered  system that is perpetually converting things from one type of energy to another type of energy to perpetuate life. I know that the Bible describes a beginning, tells stories filled with beginnings and endings that lead to new beginnings, and then ends with mysterious visions of a large-scale ending and new beginning. I believe that Jesus was God incarnate who, interestingly enough, came to suffer, die, and then rose from the dead to usher in a whole new beginning of things. I see in Jesus’ teaching and resurrection the exact same paradigm revealed in creation, in today’s chapter, and in the Great Story as a whole.  I believe that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” just as He claimed to be, and that’s why I follow.

And so, I will continue to follow Jesus and grow my faith. I will cultivate in my life and relationships the love, grace, and forgiveness that Jesus exemplified and to which He call me. I trust that this earthly journey will lead me to a time of natural harvest from my earthly body and existence. My body will be converted to different kind of energy for the time-being and my spirit (which science can’t produce, quantify, examine, or reproduce) will then be ushered into new beginnings of an eternal nature just as Jesus described. What will that all look like exactly?

I’d be happy to chat with you over coffee or a pint. We can talk about what the Bible says and what scholars and artists have speculated over time. We can talk about people who have seen things in near-death experiences. I’ll be happy to share with you what I’ve come to believe in my studying and reading and contemplation.

Just know that at the end of our conversation, after I have told you what I think about prophecies and end times and heaven and resurrected bodies and eternity, I will shrug my shoulders and tell you, “It will all pan out in the end…right before the next beginning.”

 

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Mark 13

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“However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.” Mark 13:32 (NLT)


I could not help this morning but be reminded of a few months ago when an obscure, quack pot preacher named Harold Camping predicted the end of the world on May 22 and,  because of a national billboard campaign, it became national news. He’d made the prediction before and was just as wrong. Just last year the news was all about the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 and, spurred on by a Hollywood movie that picked up on the storyline, everyone was predicting the world’s end.

Throughout my journey I’ve witnessed several doomsday predictions. Hal Lindsey‘s book 1983 Countdown to Armageddon was a big seller. I lived through 1984 when George Orwell‘s famous book of the same title created all sorts of doomsday talk. I lived through Y2K and the craziness of people stockpiling food and supplies for the apocalypse that was predicted. The Camping incident and the 2012 nonsense are just two more in a long string of doomsday predictions. As humans we tend to be obsessed with apocalypse. Knowing that, the news media loves to play into those base human fears.

Here is my easy three step guide for responding to end-of-the-world predictions. This is based on two very simple observations and one crucial teaching Jesus made:

  1. Doomsday will eventually happen. Don’t kid yourself.
  2. No one has inside information when it will be. Not even Jesus Himself. Period.
  3. We don’t need to be afraid: “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.” John 14:26 (NLT) “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28 (NLT)