Pentecost XXIII, Proper 28, Year B

Daniel 12:1-13
Hebrews 10: 31-39
Mark 13:14-23

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Perhaps more than most people, Americans enjoy speculating about the end of time, about new beginnings. We love apocalyptic ideas. It's deep in our roots. Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World because he believed God had called him to establish a new heaven and new earth as depicted in the Book of Revelation. ⁽¹⁾ Ponce de Leon thought that the Fountain of Youth was in Florida. (We're still looking for eternal life in Florida, as evident by its multitude of retirement communities.) The Puritans left England to establish an earthly paradise in the New World; many of them thought they were establishing the New Zion, the redeemed, perfect social order. Immigrants came to the New World in part because it was portrayed as an earthly paradise. We expanded westward propelled by the promise of finding or creating paradise. As a people, we are fascinated by in the last things, the end of time, and we look to the beginning of the Millennium, that is the establishment of a godly society living in peace, happiness, safety, and prosperity.

In the past decade, Tim LaHaye has become a best-selling author in league with the likes of John Grisham, Anne Rice, Danielle Steele, Tom Clancy, and Stephen King. LaHaye's "Left Behind" series now includes eleven books, which together have sold fifty-five million copies. ⁽²⁾ LaHaye churns out almost a kind of science fiction. He imagines the end times from a particular angle shared by millions of Christians. It's based upon an event known as the Rapture. If you've not heard of the Rapture, don't feel bad. I went through a fairly rigorous theological preparation in seminary, and I never heard anything about the Rapture. But it's a very powerful idea for millions of Christians, especially in America.

As best I understand it, the Rapture is the moment when true believers will be transported to heaven. One of the foundational texts for this belief is from S. Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, in which he writes: "First dead Christians will rise; then we Christians who are alive, shall be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." I suspect that Paul's language here is more metaphoric and poetic than literally descriptive, but many millions of earnest, faithful Christians would disagree with me, including LaHaye.

In Left Behind, the first book of the series, LaHaye imagines what would happen on a trans-Atlantic flight at the moment of the Rapture. Instantly, over a hundred people vanish from the 747, leaving behind their clothing, eyeglasses, hearing aids, jewelry, hairpieces, pacemakers, and surgical pins. Those who disappear are the holy. Those left behind are not the true believers. Those left behind will have to endure seven years of Tribulation, a period of intense disruption in the world, a period of rule by the Anti-Christ, but those who survive the Tribulation will see the glorious return of Christ and the establishment of Christ's millennial rule.

LaHaye's theological views, remarkable enough on their own, do not overshadow his social, political, and cultural views. He compares the looks of the Anti-Christ to a young Robert Redford. The Anti-Christ wants disarmament, a strong United Nations, a single world currency, and not only a united Christianity, but a single world religion. LaHaye has definite ideas about who are the good and who are the wicked in contemporary society. Through his book, he exercises judgment upon contemporary society. Joan Didion says of his book, "This is a story that feeds on wish fulfillment, a dream of the unempowered, the kind of dream that can be put to political use." ⁽³⁾

In other words, LaHaye's real focus is not the future, but the present. He discusses the future and imagines the end time in order to make points about what's happening now. It's social, political, cultural commentary. He's saying: these people are on the side of light, goodness, God, and these are on the side of darkness, wickedness, Satan. This is classic apocalyptic literature, but LaHaye of course does not have the authority of scripture. We don't know that his judgments are true. He and other Christian ministers may claim to know who will be saved and who won't, but they don't know. They are speculating.

One of the primary dangers of such speculation is that it often promotes the hatred of some people, the people who are not to be saved, the people judged unworthy by the author. Readers should also have no doubt that it's fantasy and not authoritative in any way. It's based upon faulty human judgment even though it is couched with biblical symbolism. We ought to be circumspect about taking literally who's in and who's out, who's favourable to God and who is not. That's God's judgment, not ours. Dante cast all of his enemies into Hell, and there's a lot of wisdom and beauty in The Divine Comedy, but we don't take it literally. It's not the 'gospel truth.'

One other hesitation I have about such speculation is that it's counter to my hope that God will save everyone. God's mercy and love have no bounds, and my hope is that every one who has ever existed, and will ever exist, will be with Christ at the close of time, following the Last Judgment. But I don't know that to be true. I'm speculating.

Today's readings from Daniel and S. Mark are apocalyptic literature, if of a somewhat different order than LaHaye's. Chapter 13 of Mark is known as 'the Little Apocalypse.' In chapter 12, Jesus was teaching in the Temple area as we heard in last week's story of the widow putting a penny into the Temple treasury. In chapter 13, Jesus has just left the Temple and headed east, dropping steeply into the Kidron Valley and then climbing up the Mount of Olives. Sitting on the Mount of Olives and looking out at the Temple, Jesus delivers a speech about the end times. He warns of the destruction of the Temple and the coming persecution of his disciples; he mentions signs of wars, false religious leaders, and the abomination of desolation. These were the realities of the early Church.

Let's be clear about the identity of the abomination of desolation, which is also mentioned in Daniel. In the early second century before Christ, the ruler of Judea was Antiochus Epiphanes, the Hellenic King of Syria, a successor of Alexander the Great. Antiochus Epiphanes' surname modestly meant 'God made manifest' - implying that he was God made manifest. In 168 B.C., Antiochus Epiphanes set up an altar to Zeus on the altar of burnt offerings in the Temple. This abomination put an end to worship in the Temple, i.e., causing the desolation of the Temple. The Temple would be later cleansed and restored for worship and sacrifice, long before Jesus was born. In Jesus' speech, the abomination of desolation refers to a future desecration of the altar, but resembling the desecration during Antiochus. This, in fact, did happen when the Romans destroyed the Temple in about 70 A.D., about the time Mark was writing his gospel. Mark knew about the destruction of the Temple and about the persecution of Christians in synagogues and before civil authorities. Mark's version of Jesus' speech describes the end times by referring to these current events.

Mark, Daniel, and the other bits of the Bible that contain apocalyptic writing do not intend to give us a timetable or a formula of future events. We can not know when or what the end of time will be like. The apocalyptic sections of the Bible were describing their own times. We have many contemporaries, people like Hal Lindsey, Pat Robertson, Jeanne Dixon, who try to identify current events with scripture written over two thousand years ago. We have many forecasters of the end of time, people who identify current events with scriptural events. Have you noticed that they are always wrong? They are always wrong. That is because they misunderstand biblical prophesy and apocalyptic. The Bible writers do not gaze into a crystal ball to give precise details about the future, but they write apocalyptic literature to describe their present circumstances.

God has too much respect for our intelligence. His religion is not about giving people some secret knowledge discerned by enlightened readers of the Bible. People claiming special, esoteric knowledge of the Bible to know future events are just saying that they are better than we are. It's an attempt to give themselves status - earthly status. It's a type of snobbery. But we do not have life, or if you prefer - we are not saved, through knowledge. Christianity is not gnosticism, that is divine revelation is not special knowledge of spiritual mysteries; divine revelation does not come to the special few, who the rest of us should follow in order to be saved. The ultimate divine revelation is the cross, where everyone can see the mystery of love and the fullness of God. Knowledge of Jesus, Jesus himself, comes to everyone of us. Every one of us can know Jesus, both by reading his story in the Bible and also by praying and receiving Christ in the sacraments of the Church.

Jesus tells us explicitly that there is no timetable, no definite way of knowing about the end, and therefore we do not allow speculations to mislead us, we do not allow deceivers to seduce us. "Of that day and of that hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." (Mt 24:36) We can't know when, but we do have to remain watchful. We have to be mindful of the end, that it will indeed come. In part, we are mindful of the end to be mindful of the fundamental realities of life: that we are going to die, and that since life has meaning, we have to give some accounting for our lives, and therefore now we have to use our gifts to the glory of God, to build up his Church, to work for the Kingdom of God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, hardly one of my favourites, was onto something when he advised us: "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday." ⁽⁴⁾

So savor the ordinary blessings of each day, live for the future by enjoying the blessings of today, and our blessings will increase when we give and sacrifice for God, when we work to make his Kingdom a reality on earth. That is one of the basic points of today's gospel.

Here's another basic point. When Daniel and Jesus were talking about the end of time, they meant that life as people new it was ending. That reality is always happening - in every generation, in every place. We always live at the end of time. Life changes, and we can't get stuck in the past or dream on the future. It's a hard reality. Don't make change an enemy, because fighting change is a sad and losing battle and because change is necessary if we're going to become sons of God. So we welcome change and allow it to help us grow.

And here's the last point. God is faithful. The world is always a crazy place, full of disappointments and suffering and sadness. But God is with us. He is here to help us in our problems. God does not abandon us even when earthly religion seems to be nuts, even when the Temple seems to be a desolation. God is with us even when the world seems to be ending. When we allow Jesus to be part of our lives, tribulation, suffering, the cross is followed by new life and the joy of the resurrection.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

1. Apocalypse, 'Frontline' (PBS) online, interviews with Catherine Wessinger, Paul Boyer, et al.

2. Joan Didion, 'Mr. Bush & the Divine,' The New York Review of Books, Vol. 50, No. 17, 6 Nov 2003 is the source for my information about the "Left Behind" series, other than the first book itself: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind, Tyndale House Publishers (1995).

3. Ibid.

4. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Works and Days," Society and Solitude, (1870).