The Eve of Destruction

After I committed my life to Jesus, I was concerned about the eternal destiny of my relatives. Or at least I told myself that. In retrospect, I wonder if what I really was looking for was affirmation that my decision was the right one; that mine was the true path for their lives. I don't know when my concern became legitimate - probably as my parents got old and frail, but by then I was trying to impact people with the testimony of my character, and often failing.

It's easier when you are selling an idea, a philosophy, a dogma. Selling the reality of your life is really difficult, but that is the cogent thing today, which puts all those who say they follow Jesus to the test. Does being a Christian mean different decisions, different reactions, different choices, different consequences, or is it only that famous slogan: "Christians aren't perfect, only forgiven?"

I look for some perfection these days, for some indication that results are connected to the declaration of faith. What is the "word of your testimony" other than this? Do Christians distance themselves from wrong; do they speak out against oppression and injustice; are they proactive in their assertion of the truth and determined in their personal conduct?

I would the answer were yes.

But in 1972, the answer was prophecy. I watched my brother-in-law, Joe Yanovitch, read THE LATE, GREAT PLANET EARTH the summer of '72. Joe wasn't a believer, but he was fascinated by prophecy the way many people were then and now. Like all discussions of future things, Bible prophecy is real, but murky. Words written in the past were interpreted later in a certain way, and now are interpreted differently. Hal Lindsey, who wrote TLGPE, asserted that passages in the Old Testament books of Daniel and Ezekiel and the New Testament book of Revelation were being fulfilled uniquely in the events of that time, specifically in the situation in the Middle East and most specifically in the return of the Jews to Israel.

If prophetic scripture written thousands of years before was actually being fulfilled, it would be a legitimate proof that the Bible was true and that God and His Son were real, and alive. The fact that TLGPE made assertions about the interpretation of certain verses that differed substantially from those presented by virtually all Biblical scholars prior to the 19th Century didn't deter Lindsey and his fellow premillennialists at Dallas Theological Seminary, from selling precise explanations of opaque passages.

In the end, the fact that Jesus didn't return in 1976 (as Charles Taylor announced), or in 1981, as many prophecy teachers taught, or any time yet has only testified of the stupidity of the church, and of those who follow its teaching.

The 20th Century was a time of extreme anxiety. People dealt with the anxiety differently. I smoked a lot of dope and ingested every drug that came my way. The Church pursued theological escape, following teaching that it would be in Heaven prior to the arrival of Armageddon. It didn't matter what was coming down, the Church would be delivered.

But the church wasn't delivered in Darfur or the Congo, in Rwanda or Zimbabwe. The Church was ravaged and Jesus didn't intervene. What happened in those nations was truly apocalyptic, and to continue with a Western Church centered worldview regarding persecution is prohibitively obscene. I recognize the outworking of evil in the world, and I don't demand that God intervene at any time outside His will, but I'll be damned if I'll let any theologian overlook what the annihilation of Christians meant on the landscape of modern prophecy. If God spoke in the past about the future, I can't imagine that He was mute about the atrocities of the last 30 years.

Looking to Biblical prophecy as an important element in verifying the Christian faith is another way of relieving the Church of its responsibility to live righteously as the major way of substantiating its claims.

Like it or not, the lives of believers matter, and Jesus isn't coming anytime soon to relieve it of its responsibility of being powerfully different than the world around it.