This Will Not Change

 It's not just California... it's the whole world!
- John Cusack's character in 2012, the movie 

No, I haven't seen the movie yet.  Short on story, long on special effects I suspect.   But Hollywood knows we love a good end-of-the-world thriller every few years.  It taps into our social anxiety that things are just getting worse and worse. What's next - how about The END?!  I had a wonderful lunch with someone today  and we were talking about the state of things in the world.  They asked the Big Question: "Where's all this going to end up?"  Nobody really knows in the short term, of course.  My prediction: Things could get a lot worse.  Or they might get a lot better.  I'm pretty sure I'm right.

This week I'm preaching on Revelation 1.  Is this the start of a 26 week sermon series on Revelation, complete with charts and timelines and clear explanations of the "mark of the beast" and identities of four horsemen?  Hardly.  When I first became a Christian roughly 30 years ago, I dove deep into that stuff.  Hal Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth scared the crud out of me - and I loved it.  Maybe it was the mental rush of thinking I knew some kind of secret about God's timing or plans for the world.  Who wouldn't like to have a world-changing secret stashed away?  Automatically you're brilliant and everyone else is just a poor, ignorant fool.  There's an appeal to that.

In his book (published in 1979), Lindsay wrote that about 70% of the prophecies in the bible had already taken place, and that most of the rest seemed to be on the verge of fulfillment.  He then writes:

What generation [would experience the end times predicted in] Matthew 24:34? Obviously, in context, the generation that would see the signs -- chief among them the rebirth of Israel.  A generation in the Bible is something like forty years. If this is a correct deduction, then within forty years or so of 1948, all these things could take place. (Late, Great pg. 54)

Lindsay was careful to never predict the "day or the hour" but he seemed to support the idea that it would take place in the next decade or so (the 80's or 90's).  And there were many so-called scholars who believed that 1988 would be the most likely year for the rapture and Christ's return.

1988 came and went, and it hasn't happened yet.  Which isn't to say that the hope of Christ's return is untrue.  It is, in fact, at the very core of our hope in a resurrected Jesus.  The Bible is clear that things won't be made completely right - they can't - until Christ returns and transforms everything.  Paul puts it this way,

Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Romans 8:20-22 (NLT)

But does that mean we should get giddy when things get bad?  "Finally!  Wars! Pestilence! Hunger! Cataclysm - YES!  Jesus must be about to come back!"    No, that's not the attitude that would serve God or our world well.  Jesus calls us to be peacemakers, lovers of enemies, blessers of the poor - in other words do the work of recreation in the power of the Spirit until he returns and finishes the job.  But I've gotten way ahead of myself.  

The message this week won't go that for, most likely.  Instead we'll focus on  John, who sat rotting on the island of Patmos - and penned the book of Revelation.  He has a bead on how we can not only make it through, but perhaps even thrive as God's people in these "in-between times" - no matter how hard they get or what happens along the way. 

- Curtis

For Sunday November 25th - The End of a Beginning

At last we are going to wrap up our series of messages, "Ten Truths to Live By." This week we study End Times! No, we're not going to have a prophecy seminar or pass out The Late Great Planet Earth or whatever is the latest book claiming to tell us when and how things will end. What we will do is take a look at several passages that talk about "the end" (or, in another way of thinking, a "new beginning").
The whole of scripture and history is really a testament to God's completion and wholeness. I often start things and do not finish them. Spanish lessons, guitar lessons, cleaning the garage, exercise programs. I can finish a chocolate bar, but not much else at times. I seem doomed to start thousands of things and finish only a few. When you or I fail to complete something we start, it depletes us because it either means we shouldn't have started it at all, or we haven't lived up to what we were intended to do. That's not God. He doesn't forget, doesn't get bored, distracted, tired, disgusted, or decide that maybe making you and me and all of creation was a big mistake after all. He always completes what he begins. This is good news.

For Sunday October 6 - A Revealing God

How does God show himself? A central truth of our faith is that God does, in fact, reveal himself. We even have a book of the bible called Revelation! I got to thinking about all the ways God reveals who he is, what his plans are, what he's like. And, as often happens, I started to try to put some parameters around the sermon by thinking about a defined number of ways God reveals himself. For instance, "God reveals himself in these 3 ways...." Then it hit me how silly that is - as if God limits himself to certain ways of relating and showing himself to us. In fact, it appears that God enjoys popping up in a endless number of ways. He talks through a donkey, he thunders, he speaks from a burning bush and through dreams, he whispers on a mountain, he writes on a wall, he talks through prophets, he shouts through creation, he breaths fire in judgment, he shares his heart through his Laws and through his Son; he uses dozens of people to write books and letters (the Bible)....the list goes on and on.
Having said that, there do seem to be ways that God most often reveals himself. Maybe that's what the Psalmist is talking about here in Psalm 119, which is the longest of all the Psalms. The amazing reality is, God Interacts with us. In fact, an argument could be made that the central reason God even created humans was so that he could relate to a creature that he had made like himself, in his own image.
Yet God is still elusive, or seems that way. The Psalmist said,
My eyes fail, looking for your promise;
I say, "When will you comfort me?"
Though I am like a wineskin in the smoke,
I do not forget your decrees.
How long must your servant wait?
Though it is so very clear that God does reveal himself, an equally strong thread through scripture is that God feels far away or hidden. That's what the Psalmist feels at times. He feels farthest away when we wish him to be the closest. Why is that? Is it simply our faulty perception, or does God really draw back - and if so, why? Your thoughts are welcome - and check out the question to the right. - Curtis