Gloom and Doom

Prognosticators and prophets often deal with similar topics, but they may play different games.  There are prophets, both secular and divine.  Secular ones rest their summaries and conclusion on the evidence of nature.  Prophets of God must rely on revelation (Scripture in our era), although there is some folding of secular objective in a prophetic context – sometimes to create a sense of compulsion to believe the gospel of Christ.  In theology this is identified as double fulfillment.  For example, Isaiah volunteered to serve God, and was given prophetic duty that included projecting future events.  One of the events included the incarnation noted in Isaiah, Chapter Seven.  King Ahaz, a believer in God, had some doubts about personal news – relief from the warfare that was not going well for Ahaz.  If the king could not believe the lesser message he certainly could not believe in the larger.  Isaiah offered to verify himself in the prophetic office, but Ahaz sensed that to doubt the prophet would somehow reduce him in the faith, and agreed to let the matter rest.  Isaiah pressed the point, using the messianic concept for relating to his proof.  Isaiah predicted that his wife would have a child, and before the infant could begin baby-like activity the enemies threatening the kingdom would be routed and peace restored.  The soon prophetic event would offer evidence of integrity that the far off prophetic message had authority and validity.  The following chapter, Eight, completed the verification.  Isaiah found truthful in the future but near event, could be counted on for the more distant one.  The narrative seems so far out for humanists that it is passed over as interesting fiction or coincidence.  Some guesses have accidental chance to serve for reality.  They may play out.

Currently the big theme for prognosticators, religious and secular, relates to the end of the earth.  Virtually everyone agrees that the world is in danger, perhaps from a collision in space.  The earth has been hit many times before, wiping out many species.  Adaptable species have survived.  It is predicted that half of modern known species have expired in my lifetime.  Analysts are at work trying to figure out how to save planet life.  One proposal to this writing I had not heard of until The Atlantic magazine featured it in the September, 2014, edition: In a last-ditch hope to stave off mass extinction, renowned naturalist E. O. Wilson argues for setting aside half of the land just for wildlife.  Fifty years after the Wilderness Act, our reporter finds that the plan is so audacious it just might work.  There are several reasons why it will not work.  The negative observation holds for mankind’s other efforts as well as survival.  There will be some advantages in the efforts, such as conservation, but the wearing out of earth, water, and air appears inescapable.  Further, the expected meteor, sooner or later, will hit; the Sun, sooner or later, will grow cold; and, the habitat will become so compressed that mankind will not be able to manage life context.  This is, of course, the scenario of the humanist – mankind alone.  The predictions for future generations are harsh – unless there is divine intervention.  That intervention may appear in stages, perhaps delayed, but the prophetic message is that all will be well.  That which was once created well will be created well again in a recognizable form, but improved.  Mother earth in its original formation is too magnificent to be lost.

The summary of the recovery of the creation, including mankind appears in Revelation 19:1 through 22:21 which passage ends the prophetic message of God.  The point is accented that the transition is not through any of the prognostications of human beings, but in the return of Jesus Christ to put all things back into the balance meant to apply at the outset of the creation of our first parents.  Although a divine denouement, it will occur in a manner not unlike that created many times in the course of dramatic events in history.  The conclusion will be the healing of nature that includes the life of mankind.  The prophets appear also to include the animals at peace with each other – Isaiah 65:25.  The Revelation closes, in 22:21 with a comforting statement presumed to settle readers living imaginatively in a maelstrom of events, and implying from the writer, the Apostle John, that all will be well: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.  That grace attended then and attends now.  Life is an ongoing gift of God to mankind.