Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
SERMON “Apocalyptic Problems”
Back in more primitive times, as an arbitrary millennia on the Christian calendar came to a close, people imagined a catastrophic ending of the age, the collapse of society, or maybe even the destruction of the earth itself. There was a surge of interest in a biblical apocalypse and the rapture, and more than a little hysteria.
I am not, in fact, speaking about the late Tenth Century, “one thousand-zero-zero-zero, party over oops out of time,” when they were partying like it’s “999.”
I am speaking about the turn of the last century, when the “Left Behind” series of Christian apocalyptic novels were bestsellers, when movies like “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” contemplated a planet-killing asteroid on a collision course with Earth, and of course, the Y2K bug was going to crash all of our computer systems, from banking to air traffic control.
It didn’t happen. Well, mostly. Air traffic control has been problematic since Reagan broke the union in 1981, and banking could come to a catastrophic end on “Q-Day,” which has nothing to do with the whackos of Q-Anon and everything to do with the fact that Quantum computing will render the encryption used by our financial system obsolete in an instant.
Y2K was a secular disaster cult, not religious. The silliness in 2012 around the Mayan Long Count Calendar was not Christian. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists maintains a Doomsday Clock, currently set at about a minute and a half from catastrophe, and they are exactly what the name suggests, Atomic Scientists. Astronomers tell us the Earth will eventually become uninhabitable as the sun continues through its life cycle.
Still, Christianity has a particular reputation, one that is well deserved, for focusing on disastrous endings and after. Now, no one has actually been raptured, at least no one I know personally, but I can suggest a good candidate if you are looking for the anti-Christ.
We really don’t know where Jesus stood on the end times. Everything we know about him was passed down as oral tradition for at least a full generation before it was written down. And what was written down contains two very distinct and seemingly incompatible ideas.
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