Looking for the wrong signs: An eclipse non-apocalypse post-mortem
Monday there was a solar eclipse visible across the US Midwest and after much speculation, false prophesying, hand wringing and oohing and ah-ing, nothing happened. Oh, it was a cool sight, solar eclipses usually are, and this is the third I have been able to see in my lifetime, but it came and went, and we are all still here. There was no rapture of the Church. There was no red heifer sacrifice, there was no one declaring themselves the anti-Christ, Russia and Iran did not invade the nation-state of Israel. Nothing happened.
Solar and lunar eclipses are natural phenomena, yes, all natural phenomena are guided by the hand of God, but still, this is a natural and totally predictable phenomenon. We knew this was going to happen and where you were going to be able to see it decades ago and we know the best place to see the next one twenty years from now. You can add on top of this that there are zero prophecies in scripture that involve a solar eclipse that is visible in the United States.
None of these things has stopped the usual suspects from coming out of the woodwork. These floods of false prophesying seem to come around a couple of times a year and over the last twenty years social media has made it easier for crazies to spread their wild speculations.
While wild doomsday prophecies are not new to history or the church the last couple of centuries have given us a superstitious and escapist eschatology that while almost completely unbiblical has wedged itself into the consciousness of not only the church but of the culture as well. Not only has this brought us a seemingly steady stream of false prophets, and false prophecies, and it’s created more than one long-lasting cult.
I say all this to say, Stop it!
Christianity is not a doomsday cult. Our message is not about escaping the world before things get too bad. We don’t look for signs and portents like the pagans. Contrary to a lot of people’s pre-suppositions the second coming is one of the least spoken about things in the New Testament, yet there are entire “ministries” and like I mentioned above, cults calling themselves Christian based entirely on escapist and doomsday theology.
When you read the letters to the seven churches in the Book of Revelation the one thing you see our Lord telling them is to endure and overcome, it is never “wait and I am going to take you away before things get really bad”, it is things may get bad but I am with you and I have already overcome the world.
That is very much the message that we need right now. Jesus is with us, and He has already overcome the world. Yes, Jesus is going to return that is not in doubt of course we do not know exactly when that is going to be.
Jesus is with us, and He has already overcome the world. Yes, Jesus is going to return that is not in doubt of course we do not know exactly when that is going to happen. God is sovereign and if he decides the work is done Jesus could return any time. I, however, think the best lens to look at this question of the order of events of Jesus return is what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15: 20-28.
What is the root of modern “End Times” mania? We could go back and look at the history of millennialism and of the Jesuits counter reformation and Darby and the Plymouth Brethren but really what it boils down to is a meme. An idea that’s constantly repeated until it’s just accepted.
These end-times ideas weren’t widely accepted until after the World Wars but then as a skeptical and pessimistic view of the world and history took hold and the fundamentalists who took scripture seriously began clashing with the growing liberal sects that didn’t end up with this weird convergence of people who took the scriptures seriously and a theology that doesn’t. The meme that you will hear repeated from people who hold to the doomsday view of the world is that they are “taking scripture literally”. I heard this growing up and I’ve heard this from John MacArthur and John Hagee and Billy Crone (and the list could on and on) and somehow taking scripture “literally” and especially taking a “literal” view of the book of Revelation can only result in a Pre-tribulation rapture pre-millennial reign of return of Christ. They will say this all while not taking scripture “literally” No one takes the book of Revelations “literally” or just as it’s written. I’ve never actually come across someone who believed the Beast out of the Sea was going to be an actual giant multi-headed beast rising out of the ocean or out of the Sea of Galilee not even in the weirdest fringe (though it’s been a while since I’ve looked). But the meme persists, that somehow seeing the beast as some future government is more literal than realizing it was 1st century Rome or that the number of the beast isn’t the name of a man who lived during the time of or near the time that the book was written but it’s more literal that it’s an RF microchip.
But I digress, and the meme however inconsistent and as much cognitive dissidence it requires persists, and it’s been the primary assumption of what I would call mainstream and popular Christianity for nearly a hundred years. Happily, I believe the meme is fading and I actually will credit the Internet with this, and I believe that faithful men on the Internet will continue to erode the foothold these ideas have on the Western church.
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