(Joel 2:23-32; 2 Tim 4:6-18) J G White / FBC Amherst
(using August Apocalypse, Aug
1, 2021, UBC Digby)
The only, tiny bit of trouble I had on January 1st? My
desktop computer, as I typed, started having little 2000s appear randomly all
over the screen. I quickly shut down the computer. But it was over; it was OK.
Many times, the end of the world has been predicted or expected or
feared. Remember 2012? Some ancient Mayan calendar in stone apparently ended
with what we call the year 2012. Perhaps that was to be ‘the apocalypse.’ No.
Watch the film, “2012,” to see what did not happen.
Today we heard from Joel in the Hebrew Scripture: I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire
and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to
blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. (J 2:30)
Probably preaching five hundred years a before Jesus, or more, Joel the
prophet is a mysterious figure. His four-page book has some memorable images
and phrases – from all the talk of a terrible locust plague, to the famous
images of The END of the world as we know it, the Apocalypse, the Day of the
Lord.
Next month I want to explore “The End” and a few themes and doctrines of
the End of the age, the second coming of Christ, and so forth. I’ll call this
sermon series: November ADVENTure,
because ‘Advent’ means the coming or arrival of something, in this case, God.
We in the Christian Church know we have the Season of Advent, the four weeks
before the Nativity, Christmas. But in our culture we do all of Christmas in
these weeks before December 25. The
parades and teas & sales and all often happen before Advent, not to
mention Christmas! We are all decorated, singing ‘Christ is born,’ and having
parties well before December 24. The 25th comes, and it is pretty
much all over and done, and we are worn out!
The theme of getting ready for the arrival of the Messiah is what Advent
is all about – so we might as well get ready for the Second Advent of Christ in
November, if all December will celebrate Jesus’ birth.
I think this is a bit like our Christian teachings about the End. It is
all about anticipation, getting ready, preparing, waiting, watching... and
Jesus never arrives! Always looking forward, never getting there!
I’m only half joking. Over the next weeks we shall explore some main themes
about the apocalypse. (Of course, next week, we get to the End of Donnie here.)
One Bible teacher on ‘the end of all things,’ Rick Durst, of Golden Gate
Baptist Seminary, prepared a metre to measure people’s interest in ‘Last
Things.’
Fear of Future
Fascination with Future
Eschatophobia
Eschatomania
How have you
felt about these things?
In our day and age of fear, I do not want you to fear the end, the
second coming, or the final judgment. I do not want any believer to be confused
or easily be led astray into some strange teachings. And I do not want anyone
to be obsessed with the end times either. We can make some sense of all this.
Our God has these teachings for us to give us hope, not horror.
The teachings about The End are found in many books of the Bible, and we
will touch some of them, as needed. Such as Jesus’ own words in the Gospels. I
wonder: before His death, Jesus said to the disciples, ‘I go to prepare a place
for you,’ and, ‘I will come again,’ did He mean come back alive on the third
day, or come back to earth a second time, later on?
I also want to explore a variety of common ways that Christians have
come to understand all these teachings. There are quite a few approaches. Last
year I studied this a bit, seeking to make up my own mind and figure out what I
actually believe. I’m still working on this.
On these Sundays before
Advent, we will look at the following: When
is the End? How can we understand all the
things that seem to be Bible predictions? Where
do we end up? The final destination for people is what? Heaven? New Earth?
Hell? And how does the final judgment happen?
Jesus’ End: What is His second advent all
about? How will His story truly end?
Today, today we heard from Joel, prophet inspired by a swarm of insects.
From my childhood I have always liked bugs, so a Bible book with a plague of
grasshoppers gets my attention. The locusts become a metaphor for The END,
God’s big day to get things finished. What Sharon read today sheds some rays of
hope – the crops will grow back, what you lost will be regained.
And then, back to this Day of the LORD. Divided into three chapters, Joel
chapter two begins with saying “the
day of the LORD is coming, it is near—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of
clouds and thick darkness!” And ends with this bit about ‘I will pour out my
spirit on all people; your sons and daughters will prophesy...’
Looking to the future is part of our Faith. It is what all religions are
about, we might say. Looking ahead is just part of life. We plan. We watch and
wait. We work towards certain goals. We grow up and grow old. We seek hope, and
find it, and share it.
The stories we tell in our faith, the ancient poems we recite, the
images in our hymns and our dreams: they all prompt us to have some hope, and
to act differently, and to wonder and be curious, move ahead.
We take a chapter, like Joel 2, and try applying it in a few ways. ‘I
will pour out my spirit,’ we read, ‘The sun shall be turned to darkness and the
moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes.’ Was this a
promise to those Jews of long ago that came true a few decades later. It
happened? They were blessed?
Or is it about a day just two thousand years ago, when those first
Christians were filled with the Holy Spirit and preached to crowds who understood
them in a multitude of native languages? Peter in Acts chapter 2 quotes Joel to
explain that day, long ago.
Or is Joel 2 about our future,
something we read of again in Revelation 6? Remember the 1984 movie,
‘Ghostbusters.’ Maybe good watching for the end of October. There is that scene
where two of the ‘ghostbusters’ talk religion.
Winston: "Hey Ray, do'you
remember something in the Bible about the last days when the dead would rise
from the grave?"
Ray: "I remember Revelation
7:12 (sic) 'And I looked as he opened
the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as
black as sackcloth, and the moon became as blood.'"
Winston: "and the seas
boiled, and the skies fell."
Ray: “Judgment day.”
Winston: “Judgment day.”
Ray and Winston did not get the
details perfect, including the chapter and verse number, but they are pretty
close. And Revelation six is awfully close to Joel two.
Then again, I know at least one person who finds, in this chapter, a
metaphor for her own life journey. The promise came true: God repaired the
years that were eaten away and destroyed for her. The years the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and
the cutter... This became a personal message about now, about her... she
was set free from the years of abuse and oppression by other people in her
life.
The language of the apocalypse can be multi-layered. But it cannot mean
everything. It takes work, and prayer. Next month, we will do a bit of work,
and praying, before we get to our
official Advent season. I want to address the things you want to know. I’m
curious what you may think about these things:
Do you wonder about the purpose or usefulness of some apocalyptic
stories/scriptures? Doctrines?
What ones, and why?
What areas would you like addressed on Sundays? What do you not want
to hear about? :)
God wins, we might say. And we get brought in to win with Christ. Good
news! Though we could say it more beautifully, and profoundly, as the
scriptures do.
Those Revelation 11:15 phrases are well-known, in the lyrics of the
‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah. Here are all the words of this famous chorus.
This could be what all the doctrines of The End should sound like, when summed
up. Not a song of fear and terror, but of joyful praise!
Hallelujah!
For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth
Hallelujah!
The kingdom of this world is become
the kingdom of our
Lord and of his Christ
and he shall reign
forever and ever.
Hallelujah!
King of kings and Lord of lords
and he shall reign forever and ever
Hallelujah!
No comments:
Post a Comment