From the Pastor’s Desk/January-February, 2012
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11
This is it! This is the last year of your life! In fact you don’t even have a year left. The end of the world is scheduled to occur on December 21, 2012. How do I know this? I heard about a movie that brings together all kinds of ancient predictions from groups as scattered as the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia to the Mayans of Mesoamerica.
Do I believe that this is the last year of my life? Well, not as these end-time alarmists predict it. But it could very well be the last year of my life. I’m preparing to lead a funeral as I write this. The person wasn’t even 10 years older than I. But he came from a long-lived family just like I do. So he probably thought he had another 30 years, just like I often think. But he was wrong. Out of the blue, he heard those bracing words we read in Jesus’ parable of the rich fool: “This very night your life will be demanded from you.” Luke 12:20
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says: “He [God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men.” We all think we’re going to live forever. No matter how many funerals we attend, we have this enduring conviction that we’re going to beat the odds—that we are not going to die! Death is something that happens to other people, not us.
But we who have the smug assurance that we are going to live forever are constantly bombarded by reminders that we are mortal. I’m fascinated by the cultural creations of our post-Christian society. This society looks with patronizing amusement on the teachings of its Christian heritage, yet the teachings of that heritage live on in altered ways. Many people claim to no longer believe the Bible. Yet the catastrophic visions of judgment we find in the book of Revelation live on in disaster movies. These disaster movies are based on serious science that claims that the world is warming up and that this will cause cities to flood as the icecaps melt, that this is already causing extreme weather events, and that it will lead eventually to some great worldwide catastrophe, like a mass extinction—this time one that includes human beings. Hmmm, that makes it sound like we’re all going to die. Well, the Bible said it first: “The wages of sin is death” Romans 3:23.
But while we’re waiting for the world to warm up enough to cause all this havoc, those disaster movies describe what’s going on inside our own bodies. The harmful chemical processes that result from consuming too much fat, too much salt, too much alcohol, too many calories, too many chemicals, could be compared to the harm caused by hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, mudslides, melting ice caps. We are the disaster movie…even if we are fairly healthy…as the effects of sin do their vile deeds upon our hearts, kidneys, lungs, skin, eyes, teeth…we are in the process of dying. What we don’t know is when the forces of decay will declare victory. But they will. Sooner or later, each one of our bodies will raise the white flag of surrender. Then, says Ecclesiastes 12:5, man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets.
The question the Bible wants us to ask ourselves in view of the “end of the world”—especially the personal expression of that fact—is this: “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?” The apostle Peter poses this question after answering people in his time who ridiculed the biblical teaching that the world will end. He reminds us that God delays judgment out of grace—not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance 2 Peter 3:2. But we left the above question unanswered: Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? If you really want to know the answer, read how the Bible answers this question in 2 Peter 3:11-18.
Pastor Dan
