Get Ready for the End of the World

AM Psalm 18:1-20 • PM Psalm 18:21-50
Deut. 3:18-28 • Rom. 9:19-33 • Matt. 24:1-14

A lot of preachers have gotten rich prophesying that the end of the world was imminent, and a lot of cartoonists have made money making fun of those prophecies. Such prophecies ignore the fact that when Jesus predicts the end of the world he admits he doesn't know when it will occur. His prediction, however, that preachers will falsely prophesy the end of the world has come true countless times.

Studying the scriptures for today's Morning Reflection, I noticed for the first time that Jesus' end-of-the-world discourse arises from a misunderstanding by his disciples: Although he has predicted the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, when “not one stone will be left standing on another,” they have falsely assumed he means the Biblically-interesting destruction of the world.

I myself used to assume that Mark, Matthew, and Luke wrote their gospels after the armies of the Roman Prince Titus destroyed Jerusalem and that they had simply put already-come-true predictions into Jesus' mouth. But now I have come to believe that Jesus, always observant, understood and did predict that the seething resentment of his fellow Jews against their Roman occupiers would burst into a revolt that would be cruelly and violently crushed.

Realizing that his disciples are more interested in Biblical “End Times,” Jesus prophesies his second coming and predicts, as any good student of history, Biblical or otherwise, could easily predict: “wars and rumors of wars,” “earthquakes, plagues, and famine” (all of which we have today, two millennia later). Get ready, he urges, because the end will come “like a thief in the night.”

He describes the end of the world for them dramatically and poetically because that's what they want to hear, but he tells them to get ready because that's what he wants them (and us!) to hear. So let us endure, whether to the end of the world or the end of our lives, in faith, hope, and active love toward God and one another.

Written by John DuVal

John prays for the people of Ukraine, invaded by cruel armies determined not to leave one stone standing upon another in any of the cities.