Signs of the Times

I grew up in the evangelical culture of the 1970’s and 1980’s hearing hundreds of sermons on Bible prophecy and the signs of the times. My parents believed in regular church attendance and my brother and I were at every service and program the church offered.

Those were turbulent years for America, but my small town was far from the war protests of bigger cities. I remember hearing about Watergate and the war in Vietnam, but they seemed like peripheral issues. Prophecy, though, was a constant topic of conversation.

Current events as signs of the times.

Dad was a reader, and I remember books like The Late Great Planet Earth lying on the coffee table. Any time the adults around me discussed current events, they would shake their heads sagely and declare, “Those are the signs of the times.” It really didn’t matter what the topic of conversation — Cultural change was synonymous with “signs of the times.”

The last generation?

I grew up with a profound sense that we lived in the end times, that the rapture was just around the corner, and that I was likely part of the last generation. I remember doubting  I would ever graduate from high school or college because according to the most popular prophetic scholars of the time, Israel’s rebirth in 1948 triggered the beginning of the end. And the generation that saw the rebirth of Israel would see the end of time. So, defining a generation as 40 years, 1988 was the last possible year for the rapture to occur, according to their interpretation of the signs of the times.

Worse, I lived in fear that I would miss the rapture. It wasn’t that I was rebellious or an unbeliever. But I was impressionable. I watched movies and read books about the rapture. And there was always that one character who didn’t make the cut. This person looked and acted like a Christian, but wasn’t really saved. I feared that maybe that was me.

How to survive the end of the world.

I have jokingly told some of my friends that Hal Lindsey (the author of The Late Great Planet Earth) stole my childhood. But it isn’t really a joke. It was true for me, in a sense.

For most people, celebrating their 30th birthday is traumatic. Not me. I couldn’t believe I was still here. We were, after all, 12 years past the deadline.

Y2k. Signs of the times? Or Happy New Year?

My distrust of prophetic timelines was bolstered when on January 1, 2000, the lights didn’t go out plunging the world into chaos. Instead, I was at a worship event where we, somewhat nervously, counted down the last seconds of 1999,  shouted Happy New Year, and went home.

Yet in 1996, I had heard an evangelist confidently affirm that this would be the catalyst for the end times. That the confusion and chaos caused by the failure of all the world’s computers would act as a smoke screen for the rapture, a plausible explanation for what had happened to millions of missing Christians.

Cynicism and faith. And signs of the times.

These events, or non-events, didn’t destroy my faith in God. But they did create a cynicism about end-times prophecy that made me distrustful of most prophetic speakers and writers.

My cynicism surprises and bothers me sometimes.  I have struggled with having a personal eschatology because I just don’t know. I’ve read books, done personal word studies, and watched YouTube. While I know that Jesus will return just like He said, I don’t have a timeline or chronology that makes sense.

Formulae and false alarms

And I have lived through too many “false alarms” to entertain a notion that anyone has found some secret mathematical formula hidden in the pages of scripture that heralds the exact date to expect Jesus’ return. Jesus said, “… about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” (Matthew 24:36) You’d think after 2000 years of erroneous warnings, we would learn to leave it alone, but no. Not yet.

What should my response be to the cataclysmic changes I see all around me? Do I need to dig a bomb shelter in the backyard and stock up on survival food? As far as I can tell, the Bible doesn’t mention bomb shelters or dehydrated food. So, you’re on your own there.

But God does offer us guidelines and a formula for how to live our lives in uncertain times. He never gives a spirit of fear.  So if my response to the signs of the times is fear, then I know it’s not of God.

Final Preparations

1. Knowing we will one day stand before God reminds us to question our priorities. When we understand that our time and gifts are God’s not ours, our perspective is bound to change.  God’s ultimate desire for all of us is that we will look and act like Jesus. (Romans 8:29)  This should encourage us to spend time hearing from God, allowing the Holy Spirit to inform our decisions.
2.  We know that  “This gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in    the whole world as a testimony to all the nations. Then the end shall come” (Matthew 24:14). We each have a role in this plan. While we have made tremendous progress in this century, there are still about 3 billion people who live in places where the gospel is not readily available.
3.  We can seek fellowship with other believers. The Christian life is        not a solo act. We need each other. Jesus sent the disciples out two by two. And on the Day of Pentecost, they were together in the upper room, not spread all over Jerusalem. “And let’s consider how to encourage one another in love and good deeds, not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another; and all the more as we see the day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24). This is not the time to isolate ourselves. We need each other.  

4. We can trust God with our concerns.  The first disciples got    impatient with Jesus. After He rose from the dead, they were sure that His next step would be to defeat Rome and establish His Kingdom on earth (Acts 1:4-8). Instead, He left them the job of taking His Kingdom to the world. There are parts we don’t understand. But His Kingdom will come when the time is right.

5. We can rejoice that we serve a merciful God. “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (I Peter 3:8-9).

  When we shift our focus from timelines to Jesus and His kingdom, we  can watch the signs of the times come and go and trust Him to accomplish His plan for the universe.

All scripture quotations from New American Standard Version.