Let’s put aside idle speculation

My late father-in-law, who died a few years ago at the age of 97, was a lifelong Christadelphian, a member of one of the various sects that arose in the mid-19th century who all embraced some form of millennialism (pre, post and who knows what else) and the belief that Jesus would return soon and the end times be ushered in. Whenever there was a global development he could associate with the prophecies in Revelation, he would say “Not long now.” The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was of course a key piece of evidence for him and his fellow believers, and, had he lived to see the current war in Gaza, while he would certainly have lamented the slaughter, he would also have rejoiced in this sign that ‘the end is nigh’. 

Throughout history people have predicted wrongly

Here’s the trouble, though. People have been believing that we are in the end times since the very beginning of the Christian faith in the first century AD. The New Testament shows us clearly that the first believers thought the return of Jesus was imminent, and, when it didn’t happen immediately, they began to have doubts about other aspects of their faith (see for instance 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance”). People also thought the world was about to end in the year 1000, since it was a nice round number for God to wind things up on. And as I have already said, there was a wave of ‘end-times-ism’ in the 1840s and 1850s, when the new-fangled doctrine of the rapture, based on a single verse of scripture, was invented (yes, if you spoke to an early Christian, or a medieval Catholic or even Luther or Wesley about the rapture, they wouldn’t have the faintest idea what you were talking about). 

Prophecy is about the present

Why are people so keen for this beautiful world, created by our parent God for our benefit and delight, to be destroyed and/or replaced? Perhaps it is because we see all the torment and suffering that also exists in our world and long for it to be over. Maybe we just want a jolly good rest. Or is it the only way we can make sense of the prophecies in the difficult book of Revelation, which has so fascinated scholars for millennia? There has never been any shortage of earnest Christians who have worked out the exact date and time of the end, despite Jesus saying quite explicitly that he didn’t even know it himself – and every single one of them has been proved wrong.

The thing is, biblical prophecy isn’t really about prediction of the future. St John the Divine (not to be confused with John the evangelist or John the letter writer, who may or may not be the same), was writing from his exile to beleaguered Christians living in an oppressive empire. Most of what he says is directed towards their situation in his own time, not to the far future at all. The same is actually true of all biblical prophecy – the prophet is first and foremost a contemporary political/moral commentator, not a fortune-teller. The prophet analyses the current situation and tells the people what will happen if they don’t change their behaviour. As I have been saying for some years, a true prophet is someone who accurately predicts the present.

Focusing our energies in the right place

Should we forget all about the end times, then? We certainly should forget about working out when they will happen and whether we are in them now, a fruitless task which takes time and energy away from actually working for the kingdom of God and loving our neighbour. 

There has never been any shortage of earnest Christians who have worked out the exact date and time of the end

However, there is another sense in which we should always be aware that the current ‘cosmos’ or world system is passing away, and that we are called to live by a different set of values from those currently in force. Biblically speaking, ever since Jesus appeared among us and ushered in the beginning of his kingdom, we have been in the end times. The prophecies of Revelation are always true and always being fulfilled. There is always a Babylon (in John’s time it was Rome), always some kind of anti-Christ, always some suffering for God’s people and always the hope of restoration. I once composed a six-word summary of Revelation which went like this: “All empires oppress; all empires fall” – to which my husband wisely added three more words: “Jesus is Lord.”

So instead of idle speculation, let’s put our energies into the holy undermining of oppressive empires, be that political or economic, and the following of Jesus on whose brow all wreaths of empire will one day meet.