Not on the Calendar
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. 2 Peter 3:10 NASB
With a roar – If you’ve been reading Today’s Word for awhile, you will have noticed that some subjects are typically avoided. One of those is “end times” investigations. That’s because I really have no idea how apocalyptic literature works. I don’t mean that we couldn’t usefully examine the genre. We could. What I mean is that this kind of literature is very symbolic, subject to endless speculation, unlikely to be understood without direct consultation with the author (which, of course, is impossible) and quite emotional. In fact, in my view, most “end times” proclamations border on fortune-telling, something the Bible actually condemns. The plain truth, I’m afraid, is that this kind of writing is intended for a particular audience in an attempt to provide encouragement and hope for a particular time. Unfortunately, believers who are otherwise quite rational about the first principle of exegesis (i.e., what did it mean to the audience that heard it first) tend to view apocalyptic literature as if it is history written in advance. That leads to some very bizarre results.
But this verse (and the surrounding verses) in Peter’s second letter might be worth some brief consideration. Why? Because what Peter suggests is a solution to a long-standing problem about the “new heaven” and the “new earth.” Let’s see.
Here’s the problem. The world is a real mess. It’s not getting better. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine how it can be better—globally, I mean. Yes, we can improve and restore our little part of the garden, but on a world scale, the planet is dying. From rain forest devastation to species extinction, world implosion seems inevitable. Of course, that doesn’t remove our obligation to steward the earth as best we can. It’s still important to pick up that plastic bottle on the seashore, stop water waste and control toxic emissions. But time is against us. For example, China has finally recognized that something needs to be done about illegal ivory trade. Laws are being passed. In the next generation, Chinese incentives for poaching may diminish. Great—but too late. If it takes forty years to curb the superstitious beliefs about rhino horns, all the rhinos in the wild will have already been exterminated. Good idea, but too late to make any real difference. So it is with all kinds of recognized problems in this world. We’re just too late. The Titanic has already hit the iceberg. Now it’s just a matter of time.
The theological problem is this: How can we expect God to restore this world to its intended state of grace? I don’t know about you, but when I think of all the things that have to be fixed—and all the implications of fixing them—I just don’t see how it can be done. Oh, and don’t give me the “It’s a miracle” answer. That doesn’t make any sense either. Take this one implication: Do you think the new earth will have automobiles? I don’t. I don’t see any reason why it should. The total worldwide destruction that resulted from the very good idea of improved transportation does fit the idea of a renewed earth. That means we walk. But what happens to life if we all walk? What happens to populations, food supplies, education, health, etc. Everything must change. And I just can’t imagine what that kind of world looks like, even if I try. It can’t look like this world two hundred years ago since the world two hundred years ago might not have had cars but it had a whole lot of other problems, some of which were actually solved by cars. You get the idea. Alter one tiny thing—everything else changes.
I don’t think the “Five People You Meet In Heaven” story is anything but fiction, and God doesn’t deal in fiction.
So along comes Peter. What does he say? In a word—rhŏizēdŏn. A great noise. A shrill sound. A crash. In other words, suddenly. Like thunder after lightening. Bang! Gone! In the end, it’s not repair. It’s resurrection. I just can’t imagine repair. It seems way too late for that. And resurrection? Well, I have no idea what that is. It’s not just a return to the old way. Yeshua wasn’t the same old person after the resurrection. Some of him looked the same, but something was different—really different. And maybe that’s why I need Peter’s reminder. I just am not able to imagine something that is completely beyond me. A resurrected earth isn’t like this earth. It’s something else.
Something is going to happen. Something wonderful. Something terrifying. Something we can’t comprehend. But when it happens everything will change. Everything—including my thinking about it. Maybe that helps me wait, and prevents me from speculating.
Oh, and today is Friday the 13th. Seems timely. I wonder where that nonsense came from.
Topical Index: apocalyptic, roar, new earth, rhŏizēdŏn, resurrection, 2 Peter 3:10
Thanks Skip ……yes when things happen everything will change including ‘our’ obsession with with what we don’t know.
Speculation is the enemy of calm
Friday the 13th nonsense? C’mon Skip. A Knight’s Templar might beg to differ, but hey I don’t want to open a can of worms. Along a similar theme, we have someone predicting the rapture yet again. This year it occurs on April 23rd. I propose we make it a floating holiday.
Do you suppose we will “float” on that day? I always wanted to fly. 🙂 The last time I encountered a man who claimed to know the end, I challenged him to sign over all his earthy assets to me on the day after his prediction, since he wouldn’t need them and I, left behind, could make good use of them during the tribulation. He declined. What do you know?
I will relate a true tale. Early in the year 1975 Jehovah’s Witnesses began making large purchases using credit cards. Many had maxed out their cards and credit lines in anticipation of the end of the world set to occur later in the year. Human nature being what it is, they probably wanted to indulge in a hitherto unsated orgy of mammon before the end. This happened after they read a false prediction in one of their publications. Needless to say a lot of foolish people fell prey to this and sought forgiveness, debt forgiveness that is. Of course their parent organization denied they made any such prediction, just like they denied making the same predictions at least 6 times since the 1880s.
My Mom is a Jehovah’s Witness “sheeple.
The fear of the number 13 has been given a scientific name: “triskaidekaphobia”; and on analogy to this the fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia, from the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή, meaning “Friday”), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς, meaning “thirteen”).
The superstition surrounding this day may have arisen in the Middle Ages, “originating from the story of Jesus’ last supper and crucifixion” in which there were [supposedly] 13 individuals present in the Upper Room on the 13th of Nisan.
A suggested origin of the superstition—Friday, 13 October 1307, the date Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar—may not have been formulated until the 20th century.
In 2018, it occurs twice: on April 13 and July 13. These are my late parents’ birthdays. I am also a 13th baby, as is my son. No fear here!
Oh! And my parents were married on one of their birthdays… 😀
Thank you, Skip. Love the caution.
We are told a lot more info about the next go-round, too. The big two that I see are that we will have a “new Jerusalem” “not built with human hands” “come down from heaven” “with God in the midst of her” and no need for “light from the sun”, and we will have not only a Tree of Life, but a whole river of it – which is the other major thing I see: no death. No eating other life. No decay. That means the very laws of physics will be reset (2nd Law of Thermodynamics, for starters). Somebody is going to have to rewind the cosmic clock for that! Big Bang reverse?
Interesting post today. Kind of a relief for me really. Our culture has this overwhelming need to have all the ducks lined up and to “know” everything. Unless I’m mistaken this is the Greek mindset in fine form! The History Channel is amusing as it tries to convince its viewers that they have the answers to the Ancients lives! Possibilities at best I think.
I am with Skip here. Apocalyptic writings are just crazy, fantastical symbolic things that I don’t understand (because I am not part of the audience it was written to) anymore than I truly understand how our Native Americans or the Aztecs truly believed. I need a translator but those come in sheep’s clothing too.
I trust that God knows what He is doing even if I don’t get it. Who am I really but a speck blown in the wind? I am grateful every day just to be able to see and hear and function in my little world.
What will come will come but I don’t see that as being fatalistic. Realistic maybe 🙂
Way less for me to worry about and make myself sick over when I have plenty to take care of in my day to day world that God gives to me.
We ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
Agreed, what lies ahead is well beyond our current realization.
God has amply preoccupied us with a full plate right now.
If we get through this life with His approval, I think we can safely
trust that words like “wonderful” and “spectacular” will have
extraordinary new meanings.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you
to be with me that you also may be where I am.” Jn 14:3
I’ve learned to take God at His Word. How incredible will a world
without trouble be?!
Your post may not be a ‘Christian’ end of times message, but it certainly is apocalyptic. Your conclusion being that, humans are in fact, killing the planet. Pretty much the same message, just from a different perspective. As soon as we bi-peds figure out how to slow the rotation of the earth, control the weather, do anything to effect the temperature of the earths core, or put the sun out, I will then be very concerned about the end of days. Until then, I do what I can to help my community, do my best to heed G-d’s instructions, be a good steward of what G-d has provided for us, and trust that G-d is in charge. Every time I hear someone say we are killing the planet, I remember the book of Job. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have understanding. Who set its measurements, if you know? Or stretched the line upon it?” There are is literally nothing that human beings can create that wasn’t already here in some form. We do not have the ability to call forth anything that G-d hasn’t already created or made provision for. Even the worst man-made disaster in recent memory, Chernobyl- nature found a way to thrive and has reclaimed the area still radiating poison. To me, to say that humans can in any way destroy the foundation which G-d set up, is to say that we are stronger than He is. Why is that only fear of the ‘end’(in whatever form that may take for an individual) that is used to attempt to motivate people into behaving? Which I suppose is the point of all ‘end times’ teaching. Just my 2 cents worth……
Well said, Amber.
Yeshua last proclamation of the end time in Matt 26 was that the end will come when the High Priest will say blessed is He that come in the name of the lord. This sound almost as if the end time prophecies all only refer to admitting that we are blest by the presence of someone that is solely teaching the will of God. When we stop theologizing and continue reflecting the pure gospel, the end is nigh. And the world can be overcome.
God is everywhere and we experience his presence as Ray said where we experience agape or is it agapoa? Do good deeds for no gain other than glorifying God.
I think your 2 cents worth is accurate. Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom and from there, many other places of experiencing God’s reality in comparison to our compartmentalising Him. Could end times teaching be a serious part of His extension of Love towards us wayward ones. And definitely to be appreciated but not worshipped.
The end times teaching has been with all of us, as an echoing drum beat throughout all the inter -ruptions to the sin life in the generations of His people given via the prophets directed to announce time and time over to God’s stiff necked partially heeding and more persistently with intent ignoring ‘God people’ throughout all the preaching of come back and love me & your neighbour…with the complete thought being………. or else I will allow my Word to stand and the curses to end YOUR times of plenty in the Land with your very lives at stake; to be effected…
Could that possibly apply to us now… or are we somehow above those notions of God’s presence and eminence and our incomplete response even though we supposedly are part- takers of a better covenant with the Torah written on our hearts by the Spirit?
And as to end times prophecy and how men can’t destroy God’s creation these come to mind from Yeshua:
in Mat 24:22 and Mark 13:20 If He did not return no flesh would survive. I don’t know if in the Greek there are other nuances but it is 2 witnesses about the same conclusion. So perhaps there is the possibility of degrading the Land/World that much, Spiritually, that all would perish as the Spirit would no longer bear with that quantity of iniquity and abomination and depart from all the bodies of the living at that point. Mercy be upon us.
If we have no need to be afraid of the end times shouldn’t we be capable of heeding God’s teaching by becoming familiar so we do not go with every wind of doctrine on these things. Perhaps we could remember the Ecclesia in Jerusalem were ready to flee Jerusalem from the Romans & be sustained in Pela in their iteration by heeding the Word of Yeshua for their particular ‘end time’.
Perhaps that attentiveness, preserved the word of faith in living Temples. The Word of Faith that Judaism had forgotten when doing the circumcision of the flesh thing in proselytism to “become Jewish” just as blood line Jews were relying on the identity of “Jew” according to their dogma for salvation too.
For God, perhaps that was important.
I agree many have cried ‘wolf’ as to the day and the hour but is becoming desensitised the answer for our iteration?
If I didn’t listen to the Spirit telling me to look up the word Easter I would still be locked into Roman Catholicism (also called Protestantism that did not protest enough). Trapped with doctrines of men.
Sometimes small change evokes the biggest change & 2 cents worth can buy a lot of lollies/candies.
Take care.Shalom
FJ
After 94 years plus I’m not sure where to start. I’m a new comer. I’ve made one comment and was quickly but GRACIOUSLY corrected –I was just ‘pulling your leg—as I am now.– I welcome that–that’s how I learn. However,Skip I some times sense a stream of pessimism creeping in..You sound like my college science professor.He didn’t want the ‘miracle answer’ either. Man–all life is a miracle and there has been real ups and downs — If God did it –it’s a miracle. I haven’t duplicated any of his creations. I thought the prophets of old were to warn of things to come, if we didn’t straighten up. Didn’t Yeshua fulfill all the things of His birth, life and the cross and resurrection, that the prophets ‘fore told’.. The “problem” big or little is US–never has been the world,–even the devil-oh he enjoys leading us off course, even guns and I don’t even own one. We are the Problem. Several ‘Post” ago you mention, speaking of the Kingdom of God that you couldn’t find it. Didn’t Yeshua mention it being near?. I think you can come across it in the strangest places. I enjoy the the Homeless breakfast because of the people I meet. Yes the ‘world’ is there, but there are seeds of the Kingdom of God. lt’s like they say. Love is where you find it” and God is there.
Looking forward to your time in Tacoma. Shalom P.S. NNNow I’m heading for the ‘bomb shelter
The wisdom of the young! YOU are right Ray (just me speaking) IT IS US…..I’m sure you remember the cartoon where POGO said, “We met the enemy and they are us”! Shalom Aleichem! Hope you had a GREAT Sabbat!
I sure do—should have thought of it.. Shalom
Hi Sugar Ray:-)
Love your wisdom and thank you for sharing.
I have to say Amen to you saying that you can come across the Kingdom of God in the strangest places!
You sound like a man full of life-what a blessing!
Oh by the way —P.S. Friday the 13th is always my lucky day. Shalom–again
I feel the same way!!! So many people around me are fixated on “end times”, the signs of the times, what if this or that…I don’t know if it’s right or wrong but I’ve never had a driving desire to figure out Revelations. I just think that my efforts today need to be focused on loving God and loving others — being the kind of person God desires for me to be. Today. The rest is taken care of and I faithfully trust God for the details.