When I was a teenager the newly developing Christian Rock
scene was saturated with an ‘end times’ emphasis - from Larry Norman's classic
song I Wish We'd All Been Ready, to Daniel Amos' lesser known Revelation Suite. Even my
favourite Canadian singer/songwriter reflected this theme in his song Can I Go With You. I am still struck by the beauty of Bruce Cockburn’s
lyrics and imagery in this song – even if I am no longer caught up in any end
times fervor (and to be fair, nor is Cockburn himself).
Back in the early 1970’s author Hal Lindsay was making a big splash with his book Late Great Planet Earth (and subsequent titles), and films like Thief in the Night were being shown in churches around North America (frightening countless impressionable teenagers in the process). I remember one evening when my parents did not return from a trip to Calgary quite when I expected them to - I got myself all worked up because I was beginning to worry that the rapture had happened and I'd been left behind! (I knew I had done some bad things and perhaps I hadn’t been sorry enough for my sins - and I hadn't quite gotten the concepts of repentance or grace yet!)
When you ride out of the shining sky
To claim the ones who love you
Can I go with you?
Can I go with you?
When the angel shouts from the heart of the sun
And the living water flows down
Can I go with you?
Can I go with you?
When the earth and stars melt like ice in the spring
And a million voices sing praise
Can I go with you?
Can I go with you?
Back in the early 1970’s author Hal Lindsay was making a big splash with his book Late Great Planet Earth (and subsequent titles), and films like Thief in the Night were being shown in churches around North America (frightening countless impressionable teenagers in the process). I remember one evening when my parents did not return from a trip to Calgary quite when I expected them to - I got myself all worked up because I was beginning to worry that the rapture had happened and I'd been left behind! (I knew I had done some bad things and perhaps I hadn’t been sorry enough for my sins - and I hadn't quite gotten the concepts of repentance or grace yet!)
At the end of Randy Stonehill’s landmark recording Welcome to Paradise the closing song on the album, Good News, fades out on a
conversation in the studio caught on tape – Randy is talking about the imminent
return of Christ and he speculates on how many years are left before the
rapture “Maybe four, maybe five?” Stonehill’s cheerful voice ponders. That was certainly the sense of things in the
late 70’s – we were living in the very end of times. That produced a paradoxical effect, we were
both excited and frightened – big things were about to happen!
Hal Lindsey, and others like him, saw the re-establishment
of the nation of Israel
as a significant sign that the countdown to Armageddon had begun. Armageddon is the site of the great battle at
the end of the world that is referenced in Revelation 16:16.
Lindsay, like others after him, took the obscure symbolism of apocalyptic literature like the Book of
Revelation, or certain parts of the Book of Daniel, and made it line up with
current events in a way that convinced a lot of people that this was legitimate
Biblical interpretation.
I remember reading a comic book as a teenager that was based on Hal Lindsey’s writing, it captured my young, and fearful, imagination. Most vividly I remember a drawing of a military helicopter (Vietnam War era) which was connected with some verses from the ninth chapter of Revelation chapter 9. These verses described the plague of locusts, saying they “had scales like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails like scorpions, with stingers…” Lindsay said these verses predicted military helicopters with their armour plating, noisy rotating blades and machine guns in their tails - and to my young mind, filled with news footage of helicopters in combat, this sort of made sense. Due to people such as Hal Lindsay and their apparent ability to unveil secret predictions in this biblical material, many were drawn to the conclusion that the end of the world as we know it was just around the corner.
I remember reading a comic book as a teenager that was based on Hal Lindsey’s writing, it captured my young, and fearful, imagination. Most vividly I remember a drawing of a military helicopter (Vietnam War era) which was connected with some verses from the ninth chapter of Revelation chapter 9. These verses described the plague of locusts, saying they “had scales like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails like scorpions, with stingers…” Lindsay said these verses predicted military helicopters with their armour plating, noisy rotating blades and machine guns in their tails - and to my young mind, filled with news footage of helicopters in combat, this sort of made sense. Due to people such as Hal Lindsay and their apparent ability to unveil secret predictions in this biblical material, many were drawn to the conclusion that the end of the world as we know it was just around the corner.
One other reason
many thought the world was near the end in the 70's and 80's is because of the never ending string of reports about nuclear arms build up between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. We were told that the
Doomsday Clock was just minutes before midnight, and
seeing how it was Atomic Scientists who were telling us this, the warning was
ominous. Living through that era resulted
in bizarre bits of information being burned into my brain - like hearing that
at the height of the nuclear arms build up there were enough weapons to destroy
the earth many times over. (I have since
learned this was not exactly accurate). I read books like A Canticle for
Leibowitz and watched movies like Planet
of the Apes (the original) – all which fed my fears and fascination with the end of the
world. Combined with the apocalyptic
interpretations of best-selling Christian writers, this was a potent stew.
However this stew began
to smell funny when I began to learn the original purpose of apocalyptic writing. When I took a course on the Book of
Revelation at seminary my thinking took a serious shift (thank you Dr. Erwin
Buck!) One of my seminary roommates has
become notable for his understanding of this apocalyptic material, and has written a well
regarded book called Apocalypse Recalled (a shout out to Dr. Harry
Maier). Through the wisdom of such teachers, and other authors like Eugene Peterson (Reversed Thunder) and Barbara Rossing (The Rapture Exposed) I began to see more clearly how
such an end times fixation mis-represented the intention of the original material, and was distracting us from the destruction of God’s good earth in the present.
More than 3 decades have passed since that time. The conversation on the end of Stonehill’s
album – “maybe four, maybe five” - seems quaint, if not silly, in retrospect. (Someone else must have thought so too, the digital versions of this recording fade the song out earlier, before these spoken words have a chance to be heard.) The end did not arrive when expected, and
many have grown tired of those who cry “wolf!” I have a friend whose family was
convinced Harold Camping was absolutely right when he predicted the end of the world,
and that was the first time Camping made a false prediction - back in September 1994. Jesus didn’t return then, nor did the rapture
happen in May 2011 – the revised date Camping convinced many people was the
gospel truth. At least after this more recent failed prediction Camping apologized for his mistake afterwards,
but words of regret didn’t really help all those folks who used up their life savings to spread
the word of an imminent end.
This fixation on the end times has not served the message of
Jesus well, we have been distracted about what might be, rather than being
concerned about what is. This emphasis on the imminent second coming of Christ
has misled many a sincere Christian. I
watched as my own grandfather got totally sucked in by the Bible quoting
televangelist Jack Van Impe, even sending significant amounts of money to that ‘ministry’
over the years. Jack takes news
reports from current events and interprets them as signs and proof of the
closeness of the second coming of Christ – but he’s been doing this for decades now! Apparently Jack Van Impe believes in the Mayan prophecy about December 21, 2012, even though it has
no connection to the Bible he maintains is the basis of his pronouncements. (Nor
was there a Mayan prophecy, just an ignorant conclusion about the end of the
Mayan calendar made by people with limited or non-existent understanding of
Mayan time-keeping). We now know how that so-called "prophecy" played out. Wrong again Jack!
This is not to say that we shouldn’t ever reflect on our end,
I do think that we need to constantly consider that every day could be our last – that is, I
think we should always be prepared to "meet our maker" as the saying goes. We shouldn’t need the fear of a future timeline
prediction to motivate us into living the way God intends us to live in the present time. The fragility of human life - as evidenced by
accident, illness and natural disaster – should be enough to convince us of the
shortness of our span on earth. When I
look at how the end times emphasis has been used in the North American church I see
a very one-sided approach – it was used to propel people into evangelism, that is, to
get as many people to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior before the
rapture. But that’s not what Jesus said
was the way we prepare for the return of the Christ the judge – rather we should have
been putting energy into loving our neighbours through feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked, tending to the sick, visiting those in prison and so forth
(Matthew 25:31-46). Ironically, over these past decades I saw much less emphasis on these
things directly mentioned by Jesus than on efforts of mis-guided evangelism
which bore little resemblance to Jesus’ ministry or words.
I also need to be clear that I do actually believe we are closer to the
end of the world than ever before, but I say this not because of some elaborate
interpretation of obscure symbols and writings in the Bible – rather I say
this because of our own human behaviour. It is human sinfulness that has allowed us to build
up weapons of mass destruction – and the current arsenal of nuclear and biological weapons, if unleashed
on earth, would certainly end life as we know it. It is human self-centeredness that has allowed
us to strip the earth of its natural resources, replacing them with pollutants
and climate changing gases – this too, if unchecked, will lead to the end of
the world as we know it. It is human
arrogance that has allowed us to mess with the building blocks of nature,
genetically modifying all kinds of organisms without truly knowing what the
long-term result of such biological and chemical manipulation will be – this too has
the potential to end the world as we know it. The end is coming, and we are bringing it closer.
