End Time

We return to the confusing prognostications about future events and the consequences for mankind and creation.  By its nature already difficult, the problem of projecting and interpreting future events and their management is exacerbated by many changing factors impacting any projections.  Even God is a changing factor in the patterns of his applications.  If we knew enough we would likely discover that a major reason for Israel’s forty years delay in getting into the Promised Land was caused by his grace to the Canaanites whose cup of evil was not yet full.  God doesn’t change his mind, but he adapts to our alternatives.  Eternal context has a nodding interest in time dimensions.  We are often helped or stalled in nature by time, benefits and hindrances.  The same perception of limitations (positive or negative) rests in Mother Nature, sometimes beneficial and sometimes in delay.  We are not well oriented to the ups and downs that affect all matters in nature and all that relates to mankind.  How could any earthling, even with some revealed information, come up with a pattern that can be cast with certainty?  Most of what we have in Scripture is transitional from an unsatisfactory situation to a victorious ending of all that is wrong, and survival of all that is right for life.  Faith argues for the competitive conflict to end, and the winning affirmative to triumph.  The Christian is asked to live by faith and righteousness, so to give opening for the extension of grace to triumph – the gift of God.  It takes some doing to gain it.  We have often, in the course of history, been embarrassed by persons of faith who extend their prophecies beyond that knowledge and analysis available to us.  Most major issues are subject to variances of guesses and assumptions.

There is the interesting story of a king in the Old Testament that is fitting in the discussion of end-time events for the world.  We remember that the best minds studying the issues of mortal life and the creation’s sustainability generally agree that the nature we know about and by which we live will end.  The naturalist finds that end in a whimper, or in a collision of planets, or in the decline of necessary elements in air, water and soil – or even in an irreversible pollution of these elements and compounds.  The world of nations may succeed in delaying/hurrying the end time, but no amount of research, discovery, and application will do more than permitted.  We may delay or extend, but we will not change God’s will.  That old king fretted about dying.  In his pattern of prayer response, God gave him fifteen additional years.  Elated by the extension, he responded in arrogance.  Informed of judgment to come for his folly, he was greatly relieved that it would occur after his death.  What of his children?  What of other generations?  His response was appalling, made even greater when we recognize that he was a person of faith.  (2 Kings 20:1-19)

Mankind wanders about in interpretations both for good and evil.  We revel in the beauty of the earth, especially in its ability to feed us.  As this is being written, a lava flow has just taken the first house of a town in Hawaii and will swallow up the town.  The barrier built to deflect the flow was eaten up in a day by fiery lava.  Earth is renewing itself, and some future generation may harvest magnificent sugar cane on the site where the town once stood.  Nothing on earth is more important to God than mankind.  With him we deplore the sin, arrogance, irresponsibility of a mammoth world population that functions with the feeling that all will end – but not in their time.  The healthy Christian faces the whole matter with the humility of prayer, and with the conduct that will offer the best for facing the negatives of nature.  God is reluctant to make judgment.  He honors prayer and acknowledgment of mortality and earth so to make transition to recovery as noted in the story of Noah. (Genesis 6-9:17)  Matters seemed normal until one day they were no longer functional.  The discussion time, learning time, positive action time, and the acknowledgment of the owner (God) of it all was discarded for a fresh beginning.  When it is no longer worth preserving, the old (former) must be done away.  There will be a fresh start.  In this faith denouement, Christians live and love in an all-encompassing prayer: Lord, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread (Matthew 6:10-11) – and help us to live the gospel of hope (immortality) in Jesus Christ.  There is an acceptance for us in that we find in our lives – as noted in Revelation 22:11, a verse often referred to in these Pages, and important to our understanding for both spiritual and physical comfort.