Get ready, stay ready
- Oct 1, 2008
As if the financial crisis in the U.S. isn’t enough to make us lose sleep nightly, it appears likely the Middle East will soon erupt into the headlines once again. This week’s scheduled visit of anti-semitic Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to New York City brings to mind once again the preponderance of problems in that area of the world that continue to demand a prominent place on the world stage.
At the confluence of what academics call the Great Religions of the World (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), the Middle East has always seethed with intractable violence and political/religions intrigue. Mix that age-old problem with the world’s unslakable thirst for oil—the dwindling remainder of which is overwhelmingly located in the Middle East—and an abundant supply of high-tech weaponry, and the potential is for tragedy on a scale we have never before seen.
It’s a bad neighborhood and no one’s record in the Middle East is without blemish, but it does appear that the Jewish state of Israel will once again be forced to defend itself against increasingly-sophisticated attacks from rump Islamic terrorist groups like Hezbollah that operate from nearby countries like Lebanon. Those groups are in turn heavily supported by countries like Syria and Iran, which widens any conflict and threatens to engulf the entire region in all-out war.
A little over a year ago, an air strike widely credited to the Israelis destroyed a suspected Syrian nuclear development site. Many observers believe it is only a matter of time before Israel is forced to take out similar Iranian facilities in the name of self-preservation.
If war indeed comes to the Middle East, countries outside the region with “interests” will undoubtedly feel compelled to become involved and whatever actions they take are not likely to lead to a lessening of tensions. Modern conventional weapons are capable of inflicting tremendous suffering and pain, but policymakers and war planners now must factor in the possible introduction of nuclear weapons.
Is all this beginning to sound like Armageddon? If so, we would not be the first generation to believe we are living in the Last Days.
When a lightning strike set off a massive fire in the virgin forests of the northeastern U.S., smoke so blackened the sky that Puritans downwind concluded the lack of daylight was a sign the Lord was on His way back. During the devastation of World War I, reports circulated that the German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II was the much-anticipated antichrist and the end was near. Virtually the same was said about Adolph Hitler during World War II.
In our own day, we have had Edgar Whisenant’s 88 Reasons Why Rapture Could be in 1988, which sold more than 4.5 million copies. When Rapture didn’t come in 1988, he conveniently wrote the follow up, Rapture Report 1989. Failing again to correctly date the Rapture, Whisenant updated his predictions every year through 1994 before apparently giving up.
We should keep Whisenant’s story in mind when we are told this time, as we no doubt will be, that the end is near because of events currently transpiring in the Middle East and around the world. Instead of succumbing to the hystericism, we should simply resort to the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:36-44 (NIV):
“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this; If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
There. Don’t you feel better already? Don’t try to divine the future. Don’t even give a worry to the future. Just be ready. Live your life every day as if Jesus is on His way.
It’s time people saw us living like we believe that, anyway.
This article is reprinted from the September 25, 2008, issue of The Baptist Record, the newspaper of the Mississippi Baptist Convention.
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