End of Days

I read a recent comment amongst my five hundred friends that mentioned the end of days, and it had me riled up. I'm not totally sure why I was incited so easily by such a common comment. However, I think that I'm just tired of the catastrophizing that goes on in our nation, and in our lives. As a Psychology Major, Classics Minor, Church Elder, and Group Home Counselor, I work primarily with children, but often in the face of God and in respect to religion. My children, all of them, have a purpose in this world and I don't want to see people tell them that it’s just to live long enough to see the world as we know it come to an end.

Revelation is the book that sparks the most uproar about the end of days, and is what most people will refer to when speaking of them. However, like most of the Bible, they will make the current situation fit into a few verses that correlate. And when I say correlate I do mean loosely. If you look at one verse in the bible, its like listening to one verse, or line of a song or poem. Its equivalent to reading a paragraph from any other book and assuming you know what it’s about. It can be compared to listening to a second of the weather and planning your entire week accordingly. You just can't do it.

Revelation is such a deep and compounded book that many theologians dedicate their lives to studying and researching the book. I cannot pretend to be one of these theologians, but I have enough contextual understanding and non literalist perspective that can help me remove today's fears from the readings. However my point in this writing is to argue from a literalist point of view, which is very contrary to what I would normally do.

Revelation, after the letters to the seven churches, begins with John being invited into the spirit to see the plans that God has made. I want to interject here, it was written much like the writings of Hesiod and Ovid, very mythical and on a grand scale. Which if we stick to that comparison means that we have no idea what the true intent of God's message is here. I've heard arguments that John had no idea what he was looking at, and you would have to agree, if you agree that the end of times will be in our life time or our children's. Unless we somehow revert to living in a society with no electricity, machines, or technology...then poor john would have been scared crazy at some of the things he would have seen, I.E. Tanks, helicopters, and other war machines.

It continues with the Scroll and the Seven Seals, which invites the Four Horsemen, who are kind of cool...and also not present in our world as of late. We have war yes, we have famine yes, we don't really have pestilence, and strife...well we have that in spades.

War has existed since the dawn of time, if we thought the end of times was kicked off every time that happened, well we would have been Rapture a thousand times since then. Also the wars we have now are nothing in comparison to the ones that once existed. It was nothing for wars to last a hundred years, or destroys entire cities. Think back to our very own World Wars one and two, those were wars, albeit short wars. What we have now is a fight against a specific type of lifestyle that is a danger to us all, not any one country trying to take over many others.

Famine...let me tell you about famine...its about having a plate full of food for you and your household each night with no fear of its cleanliness and expense. Oh wait...that doesn't sound like Famine...that sounds like America. If America would get off its greedy hands and distribute the amount of food that we have, we could end world hunger. That goes also for many European countries, despite that their proportions are a third of what ours are. There are countries that exist in Famine but seeing as it is within our power to end it, I don't think that horseman is up to full power yet.

Pestilences...bubonic plague anyone? We have a handle on most of the diseases of today's times. In today's times I would argue the HIV/AIDS is probably the most dangerous and wide spread communicable disease of our time. It infects and kills close to 1% of our population. Despite seeming like a low statistic, that is an overwhelming number of people. Around 5 million people infected and killed. However 600 years ago, Europe alone lost FIFTY (50) percent of their population. I hate HIV and AIDS with a passion, but I think that a warrior of God, spreading disease would have higher rates.

Strife, as I said we have that in spades, be it in our families or churches, and even in our political arenas. We love us some strife. However, that’s because we are dumb… and sentient. We have the ability to make choices and have opinions. The Bible claims that strife will employ the wild animals of the world, which I’m fairly certain hasn’t happened in recent times. Strife or Death being the Fourth Rider has significance in and of itself, which when paired with later verses in Revelation would say that God is taking Death away from those who aren’t worthy. People still drop dead every day, we haven’t gotten there yet.

I think that the earthquake in Japan, is the point of most people’s concerns currently. I pray that they find relief, and help from those that can. However Revelation 6:12 states that “…and there came a great earthquake…” and continues to detail how we will lose the sun, the moon, and the stars. Revelation says A great earthquake. One, singular, massive. I think it would be safe to assume that when this one great earthquake comes it will rock our world…literally. Japan is in trouble, how quickly we forget Haiti, how quickly we forget Sri Lanka, how quickly we forget San Francisco and many more earthquakes that strike periodically. It’s what the earth does.

Please pray for Japan, and everyone else caught up in the pain and suffering in this world. Know that God has plans for every smile and laugh that a child can give you, and know that the End of Days has not quiet reached us. When the sun blacks out, then be scared. Till then…I’ll see you on the bright side of 2012