end of days

I honestly do not know how my audience as a whole will take this post. It reflects my true opinions, but I think there are people who really care about this topic and some who really don't, and I am horrible at distinguishing the two. Regardless as to which group you are in, please read this with a grain of salt.

This past weekend I watched The Omen. The idea of the movie is that things that have happened in recent years correlate to the seven trumpets in Revelation 8, and that the Beast arrived on earth in the form of a baby on June 6, 2006. The movie was good, but not great. It was about what I expected.

After I watched the movie, though, I noticed that there was a short documentary on the beliefs surrounding the end times and specifically the mark of the beast in the DVD extras. A wide variety of folks were interviewed from Tim LaHaye to the leader of The Church of Satan. As is usually the case, a lot of people put a lot of value in their personal beliefs about prophesies in Revelation.

I am always amazed at the interest that the end times (also called eschatology) seems to inspire in church settings. In the last decade Christian producers have released not just one but two movies to theaters on the last days. The Left Behind series was somehow stretched to ten books. Finally, in my own experience when people in one specific class in my church were asked one summer to list questions they wanted our pastoral staff to address, they listed about four weeks of questions on the end times. Obviously, there are people who care. I am very nearly not one of those people.

Because I don't see how it applies to everyday life, the end times is something that I don't expend too much energy over. I tend to avoid conversations about it and do not go out of my way to study it.

There is one thing about the end times that I do care about. I believe that some people substitute an interest in knowing God with an interest in knowing what is going to happen in the future. Rather than look at the real meat in Scripture, I think that many people would prefer to waste time speculating what the four horsemen, or the seven bowls, or the seven trumpets mean. I do not think this is God's intent.

My eschatological belief is that God does not intend for us to know what exactly is going to happen, and that it is a waste of time to obsess over it. This may sound weird coming from someone who believes in the same Bible that contains the books of Daniel and Revelation, but it is true. I believe that if God wanted us to care about the specifics of how things will work out in the end He would have given us specifics. Instead God gave us enough information to know that there will be an end of days at some point (which some preterists actually disagree with, but it's not worth arguing) and that it will eventually be followed by a judgment. The rest is purposely coded in a way that we cannot decrypt.

If you think this sounds dumb, consider that God did this once before. There were Jews in Jesus' time who were looking for a Messiah to free them from Rome's iron grip. They had plenty of prophesies that could be interpreted to support these beliefs, however wrong the beliefs were. Every time I hear someone say with certainty that some obscure prophesy in Daniel or Revelation refers to such and such event that will happen at this specific point in a timeline, I am reminded of those people who thought the Messiah would be a warrior rather than a servant.

What really gets under my skin is when someone who I think obsesses too much about the end times refers to a verse like it is the ultimate proof that what they are saying is correct, but say it so quickly that no one who wanted to check the context could remember what the passage address was let alone take the time to look it up. But I digress.

Please don't get me wrong. I believe that if end times prophesy is in Scripture it does have value. I just read prophetic passages more simply than a lot of other people do. Revelation is an encouragement to a persecuted church not to give up. That is why there are two chapters' worth of instructions to individual churches. The prophesies in Matthew 24 through 25 are reminders that there are eternal consequences for selfishness. That is why they keep referring to treating others right. Daniel's prophesies are meant to show that governments are temporary and God is permanent. This is where all his prophesy ultimately leads.

To read more into the Bible than is really there is to put words in God's mouth. Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough for that task.