Following the Palm Sunday story, the gospels, particularly Matthew, relate an extended amount of Jesus' teaching to his disciples. As I read through that teaching, I was struck by how much of that relates to the end of the world and the second coming...
Talk about the Second Coming, about the End Times and about life after death is bound to be somewhat controversial.... it certainly was in Jesus time, with at least one major Jewish faction (the Sadducees) adamant that there was no such thing as eternal life, and another (the Pharisees) convinced that there was... so Jesus' comments making it clear that he has come to offer Eternal Life were bound to stir things up somewhat with the religious authorities at the time. And yet, it feels like the Church these days seems to shy away from a discussion of the End of the World and what comes after.
Its probably not surprising. After all, those making predictions of the coming Rapture, of the imminent end of the everything have not exactly had a good track record... and even when Christians have refrained from trying to make an accurate prediction about the timing, then it has proved so difficult to come up with any account of the Second Coming which gets any kind of agreement that the whole area is one the is often avoided...
And yet, so often we get bogged down in debate about the when and how and what of the Second Coming. The concepts of pre-millenial, post-millenial, amillenial, tribulationism, rapture, are all attempts to define, perhaps even decode, the words of scripture relating to this event, to try and guess and second guess the plans of the Almighty... attempts which, to my mind derail us from the central and most important fact relating to the second coming - the fact that Jesus is coming again, coming to reign in glory, and in doing so he will put an end to the pain and suffering that is so abundant in this world today.
We should be excited by this. Really, really excited, because its such a big thing. And yet,
its not something that the rest of the world finds it easy to connect with. Somehow we need to get this across to people - but do so in a way which doesn't make Christianity out to be "Pie in the Sky When We Die" -- which seems to be the other common misconception of Christian thinking about the end of the world.
Its a tall order, and I don't have an easy answer. I believe that the death of Jesus is the solution for all eternity - a solution which starts here and now, today, as we live out our daily lives. I just wish I was better at getting that across to those I meet. But this is one of (if not the central) claim of Christianity - that by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we, sinful, fallen humanity, can have a relationship with our creator God, a relationship which will go on past death into eternity. Shouldn't that be something we shout from the rooftops?
And yet, so often we get bogged down in debate about the when and how and what of the Second Coming. The concepts of pre-millenial, post-millenial, amillenial, tribulationism, rapture, are all attempts to define, perhaps even decode, the words of scripture relating to this event, to try and guess and second guess the plans of the Almighty... attempts which, to my mind derail us from the central and most important fact relating to the second coming - the fact that Jesus is coming again, coming to reign in glory, and in doing so he will put an end to the pain and suffering that is so abundant in this world today.
its not something that the rest of the world finds it easy to connect with. Somehow we need to get this across to people - but do so in a way which doesn't make Christianity out to be "Pie in the Sky When We Die" -- which seems to be the other common misconception of Christian thinking about the end of the world.
Its a tall order, and I don't have an easy answer. I believe that the death of Jesus is the solution for all eternity - a solution which starts here and now, today, as we live out our daily lives. I just wish I was better at getting that across to those I meet. But this is one of (if not the central) claim of Christianity - that by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we, sinful, fallen humanity, can have a relationship with our creator God, a relationship which will go on past death into eternity. Shouldn't that be something we shout from the rooftops?
No comments:
Post a Comment