Last Things

There is a brilliant short interview on Patheos with Os Guinness based on his book, A Free People's Suicide. Guinness argues that America may be on the road to a slow death by suicide.

Guinness said,

The title [of the book] goes back to Abraham Lincoln. “As a nation of free men, either we will live free for all time or die by suicide.” Strong, free nations always bring themselves down. That's going to be America's problem. It won't come down from foreign challenges but by internal corruptions, and in this case by the corruption of freedom.

Guinness also adds, "This is explicitly not a partisan issue. ... The framers had a vision of freedom which … was not only negative freedom from but also a positive freedom to be. American freedom now is almost exclusively freedom from—freedom from interference or freedom from constraint."

Editor’s Note: See also historian Will Durant's observation that “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

History is filled with the evidence that nations which forsake godly principles and embrace sin will face severe consequences.

The CDC’s yearly youth report found that around a quarter of high school students identify as gay, bisexual, or have a more fluid sexuality. This compares to just 75.5 percent of 14 to 18-year-olds said they were heterosexual in 2021—a new low.

The remainder said they were either bisexual (12.1 percent), gay or lesbian (3.2 percent), “other” (3.9 percent) or said they “questioned” their sexuality (5.2 percent). The percentage of students who do not view themselves as straight has more than doubled in recent years—from 11 percent in 2015 to 24.5 percent in 2021.

Rates of alternate sexualities in school-aged children are much higher than the adult population—where about seven percent are gay, bisexual, or other. Experts say the explosion in alternative sexualities among children can be partly attributed to increased acceptance. Dr. Mollie Blackburn, who teaches sexuality studies at Ohio State University, said: “It's an increase in acceptance from both parents and society. [Accepting people] creates a context where a child will be more willing to say that they are gay.”

But Jay Richard, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the rise of gender studies in American schools in recent years was partly behind the rise. “There is no doubt in my mind that schools are absolutely playing a role in this growth.” In recent years, some schools have begun teaching sex education as young as second grade.

Richard also claimed the increased political focus on social justice was incentivizing children to say they were not heterosexual, to seem “less plain. ... There are social incentives to declaring yourself a sexual minority. There is nothing you have to do to be bisexual. You just wanna make yourself cooler.”

The alleged prophet Nostradamus is more popular than ever in these troubled times. Books about him and his prophecies are high on the best seller lists even today. His predictions are fraudulent not because they contradict Scripture, but by pure logical reasoning.

The British daily paper the Guardian recently exposed the prophet's devious methods. The reader can read into Nostradamus' vague words whatever he or she wants:

Circumlocution and evasion of directness play a large part. He usually waffled in his astrological datings, since conjunctions are repeated. He invoked obscure Latin words to create possibilities of double meanings; he omitted prepositions, articles, reflexives, and connectives, and favored the infinitive as a timeless, personless form that can be read many ways.

Nostradamus has the virtue of vagueness combined with apocalyptic fervor. That’s not unusual. Many sayers of sooth, from Merlin and Geoffrey of Monmouth onwards, have done the same. This vagueness lends itself to what we now know as confirmation bias. In desperate times, soothsayers have a ready audience for their insane nonsense. It’s the meeting point of cynicism and gullibility.

When life seems chaotic and the future uncertain, people look for patterns, narratives and meaning. At moments of great change or social anxiety we do tend to go looking for explanations. We want the past and the future to make narrative sense.

The often-referenced passage in Daniel 12:4 about an "increase in knowledge" during the last days has taken on new meaning in our high-tech age. Thanks to the internet humanity has never before had access to so much knowledge. A scary next step is what we are producing with this overwhelming increase in knowledge.

Go is arguably the most complex board game in existence. And is thought to be the oldest board game still being played today. However, it's not only humans that are playing this game now. In 2016, Google DeepMind's AlphaGo beat 18-time world champion Lee Sedol in four out of five games. Now, normally a computer beating a human at a game like chess or checkers wouldn't be that impressive. But Go is different. There are over 170 moves possible in Go. To put that into perspective, there are only just over 100 different atoms in the observable universe.

However, what many people don't know is that only a year after AlphaGo's victory over Lee Sedol, a brand-new AI called AlphaGo Zero beat the original AlphaGo 100 games in a row. The most impressive part? It learned how to play with zero human interaction. This technique is more powerful than any previous version. Why? It isn't restricted to human knowledge. No data was given. With just the bare-bones rules, AlphaGo Zero surpassed the previous version in only 40 days of learning. In only 40 days, it surpassed over 2,500 years of strategy and knowledge. It is now regarded as the best Go player in the world.

And if we continue to develop Artificial Intelligence, then, that means there's going to be more and more non-human intelligence. Eventually, there's going to be a point where we represent the minority of intelligence. Maybe even a very minuscule amount.

Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk comments on the rapid development of artificial intelligence: "It could be terrible and it could be great. It's not clear. But one thing is for sure, we will not control it."

You can watch the video here (Time: Start – 2 min 32 sec).

"I don't know what happens after this life. I haven't had my mother or anybody else come back and tell me. I think hell is hell on earth. And heaven to me is a beautiful lady and enjoyment with her. But if there is a hereafter—I wish I could go there."

— B.B. King, Blues musician, died 2015

Here's a great article to set up a sermon on fear, the end of the world, or how to embrace mission rather than escapism. A website called Wall Street 24/7 ran an article on the industries that are making the most money off "doomsday preppers"—people who are getting ready for the end of the world as we know it. Don't laugh—it's a multibillion dollar business.

Experts estimate that as many as 3.7 million Americans are classified as preppers, and when the apocalypse comes all of them want the basic necessities: food, clothing and shelter, plus power systems, water filtration systems, communications systems, and bunkers. Here's one example of how preppers are preparing to face disaster: "[TheReadyStore.com store] sells its READYprep-2000 Food Storage Supply Kit, a 12-month supply of balanced nutrition from freeze-dried foods that are reconstituted with water. The average shelf life: 27 years. The cost: $3,683.25. Even Costco Wholesale Inc. sells the Chef's Banquet All-Purpose Readiness Kits for $149.99, with more than 600 servings of premium 'just add water' meal options. Its shelf life is 20 years."

Possible Preaching Angle:

That's probably not what Jesus had in mind when he said, "Therefore you must also be ready …" (Matthew 24:43).

Author Darrell Johnson, drawing inspiration from James Sire and N.T. Wright, says that every worldview is asking and trying to answer the following nine questions:

1. What is prime reality? What is the "really real"?

2. Who or what are we? What does it mean to be a human being?

3. Is there such a thing as "morality," right and wrong? If so, what is its basis; how does one know the good and the bad?

4. What is the meaning of history? Or, is there any meaning?

5. What is wrong with us? Something is off—what is it?

6. Is there a solution; can things be fixed? By whom? How? How quickly?

7. Is there a God? If so, can this God be known? And is this God involved in the world, especially relative to human suffering?

8. What happens to a human being at death?

9. What time is it? "There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven" (Eccles 3:1). Where are we in the flow of history?

Darrell W. Johnson, The Glory of Preaching (InterVarsity, 2009), 67-68; Johnson credits James Sire, The Universe Next Door and N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, saying, "My compilation is inspired by those proposed by Sire and Wright."

Think the end of the world. For some that is a bunch of science fiction nonsense, but for others the idea that humanity could someday be wiped out by a nuclear holocaust or a doomsday virus or an environmental catastrophe is not hard to imagine. In fact, they are already thinking about how to keep that from happening. Somehow, after the unthinkable happens, we have to find a way to resurrect humanity.

Enter comedian Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. The man has DNA, and someone thinks his DNA is the perfect "seed" for a new humanity. Really! In the fall of 2008, Colbert's DNA was digitized and sent to the International Space Station to be kept in a time capsule. The courier for the DNA was video game tycoon Richard Garriott, who spent ten days in space in October of 2008 as a space tourist. In a statement Garriott explained, "In the unlikely event that earth and humanity are destroyed, mankind can be resurrected with Stephen Colbert's DNA …. Is there a better person for us to turn to for this high-level responsibility?"

Theologians use a phrase to talk about how Christ-followers are already redeemed but will not experience the fullness of redemption until they live with God in heaven. The phrase is, "The already and the not yet." How does that work exactly?

A little girl in England, Josie Caven, was born profoundly deaf. Growing up, she often felt isolated because of her inability to hear, but that changed after receiving a cochlear implant during the Christmas season. At the age of 12, she heard clearly for the first time. The first sound she heard was the song "Jingle Bells" coming from the radio.

Was Josie's hearing restored? Yes—completely. Was she hearing well immediately? Not exactly. Her mother said, "She is having to learn what each new sound is and what it means. She will ask, 'Was that a door closing?' and has realized for the first time that the light in her room hums when it is switched on. She even knows what her name sounds like now, because before she could not hear the soft 'S' sound in the middle of the word. Seeing her face light up as she hears everything around her is all I could have wished for this Christmas."

Josie's hearing was restored, but that restoration introduced her to the daily adventure of learning to distinguish each new sound in the hearing world. It's the already, and the not yet.

How the news media would announce the end of the world:

Sports Illustrated: "Game's Over!"

Ladies' Home Journal: "Lose 10 Pounds by Judgment Day with Our New Armageddon Diet!"

Inc. Magazine: "Ten Ways You Can Profit from the Apocalypse."

CNN: "World Ends; Women and Children Most Affected."

A New York Times article titled, “How to Get Out Alive: What the Science of Evacuation Reveals About How Humans Behave in the Worst of Times,” tells what researchers have learned about evacuation from disaster survivors.

In the case of the doomed Trade Towers, those who made it out waited for an average of six minutes before evacuating. Some lingered as long as half an hour. What did they do while they waited? Some helped co-workers. Others milled around. The article said, “Many called relatives. About 1,000 took the time to shut down their computers…. At least 70 percent of survivors spoke with other people before trying to leave.”

One lesson was that, in spite of a previous attack on the towers, and various efforts to make evacuation effective, less than half the survivors knew there were three stairwells in the building, and less than half had ever entered a stairwell. One investigator said, “I found the lack of preparedness shocking.”

One woman, Elia Zedeno, who was on the 73rd floor of Tower One, “heard a booming explosion and felt the building actually lurch to the south, as if it might topple.” The article stated:

You might expect that her next instinct was to flee. But she had the opposite reaction. “What I really wanted was for someone to scream back, ‘Everything is okay! Don’t worry. It’s in your head.’” Fortunately, at least one of Zedeno’s colleagues responded differently. “The answer I got was another co-worker screaming, ‘Get out of the building!’” she remembers now. Almost four years later, she still thinks about that command. “My question is, what would I have done if the person had said nothing?”

This world is going to end. The Bible promises it will happen when people least expect it. But God’s Word also gives clear directions on “How To Get Out Alive.” We can’t afford to keep quiet. People’s lives are on the line.

Fire is often used as a symbol of God's judgment in the Bible. And for good reason. The ancient world understood fire as a terrible destructive force. One of the greatest fires in the ancient world occurred in Rome in A.D. 64. The Roman historian Tacitus, who left us the best account of the fire, says it began at the east end of the Circus Maximus: "Amid the shops containing inflammable wares, the conflagration both broke out and instantly became so fierce and so rapid from the wind that it seized in its grasp the entire length of the Circus."

Soon the whole broad valley between the Palatine and Aventine Hills was a sea of fire, checked only by the Tiber River. Then the flames licked up the hillsides, climbing the buildings and temples that crowned them, far outstripping efforts of fire brigades to stop them.

Tacitus noted, "The wailings of terror-stricken women, the feebleness of age, the helpless inexperience of childhood, the crowds who sought to save themselves or others, dragging out the infirm or waiting for them, and by their hurry in the one case, by their delay in the other, aggravating the confusion." Many people were overrun by the flames; some so despaired of loss of home and loved ones, they simply let the fire sweep over them even though they had a way of escape.

After five or six days, the fire sputtered out when it came to the foot of the Esquiline hill, where the buildings had been razed so that the fire met nothing but open land and sky. But before the city could relax, the fire returned for another three days, now consuming the more spacious districts of the city, though this time with less loss of life.

Ten of Rome's 14 districts were destroyed: three were leveled to the ground; seven, says Tacitus, "were left only a few shattered, half-burnt relics of houses." Historian R. F. Newbold estimates that at least 10,000 to 12,000 tenement buildings were destroyed, plus several hundred private homes, leaving more than 200,000 people homeless.

"It would not be easy to enter into a computation of the private mansions, the blocks of tenements, and of the temples which were lost," wrote Tacitus. He specifically mentions the altar and shrine to Hercules, the Temple of Jupiter, and "various beauties of Greek art … [and] the ancient and genuine historical monuments of men of genius." He concluded poignantly, "Old men will remember many things which could not be replaced."

When asked about the most disheartening thing that had happened to him, Marilyn Manson answered, "I think that the world's been ending since the day I was born, and it keeps beating toward that every day. One half of me wishes that it would get it over with; the other half of me has this optimism that I can contribute something worthwhile."

For centuries there have been innumerable theories as to when and how the world might end. Here are some highlights gleaned from alleged prophecies:

In 960 Bernard of Thuringia, a German theologian, calculated 992 as the most likely year for the world's end. As the time approached, panic was widespread.

German astrologer Johann Stoffler predicted an overwhelming flood on February 20, 1524. Believers started constructing arks. One man is said to have been trampled to death by a mob attempting to board his specially built vessel. When nothing happened, the calculations were revised and a new date given—1588. That year also passed without any unusual rainfall.

Solomon Eccles was jailed in London's Bridewell Prison in 1665 for striding through Smithfield Market, carrying a pan of blazing sulfur on his head, and proclaiming doom and destruction. Although the end of the world did not follow, the Great Fire of London did, in 1666.

After studying both the Bible and the mystical messages of the Great Pyramid, in 1874 Charles Taze Russell, founder of the sect that became Jehovah's Witnesses, concluded that the Second Coming had already taken place. He declared that people had 40 years, or until 1914, to enter his faith or be destroyed. Later he modified the date to "very soon after 1914."

Herbert W. Armstrong, publisher of the magazine "The Plain Truth," declared that January 7, 1972, was undoubtedly the date to watch. The utter failure of his prediction did not diminish his zeal.

The 16th-century seer Nostradamus is said to have favored 1999 as the year of a Martian invasion, while an 18th-century French prophetess, Jeanne Le Roger, established the year 2000 as the definitive one.

More recently, Harold Camping, the Family Radio evangelist predicted the end of the world could be Friday, October 21, 2011.

On July 25, 2000, Air France Concorde flight 4590 on July 25, 2000, which crashed on take off in Paris. One hundred passengers, nine crew, and four people on the ground were killed when the Concorde banked, went into a stall, plunged to the ground, and exploded on impact in a fireball.

The cause of the crash was a 16-inch strip of metal found on the runway that burst the aircraft's tire, and the debris from the blowout ruptured a fuel tank in the aircraft's wing. With the plane on fire the pilot could not halt the take off; he planned to make an emergency landing at Le Bourget airport a minute's flying time away.

As investigators sought to discover the reason for the accident, they listened to the tapes of the pilot's conversations with the control tower. His last words as he fought to save his stricken craft were, "Too late."

We only have one life to live on Earth. If we fail to make our peace with God or man before life ends, it will be "too late!"

Theologian Dale Bruner writes:

David Peterson, former pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Spokane, Washington, told about a time when he was preparing his sermon. His little daughter came in and said, "Daddy, can we play?"

He answered, "I'm awfully sorry, Sweetheart, but I'm right in the middle of preparing this sermon. In about an hour I can play."

She said, "Okay, when you're finished, Daddy, I am going to give you a great big hug."

He said, "Thank you very much." She went to the door and (these are his words) "Then she did a U-turn and came back and gave me a chiropractic, bone-breaking hug." David said to her, "Darling, you said you were going to give me a hug after I finished."

She answered, "Daddy, I just wanted you to know what you have to look forward to!"

One meaning of Christmas is that God wants us to know, through this First Coming, how much we have to look forward to in the great Second Coming.

After being blamed for inciting the Columbine shootings, rock star Marilyn Manson argued in Rolling Stone:

I'm a controversial artist, one who dares to have an opinion and bothers to create music and videos that challenge people's ideas in a world that is watered-down and hollow. In my work I examine the America we live in, and I've always tried to show people that the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don't expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue—it's been happening every day for a long time.

On March 26, 2000, Seattle's famed Kingdome—home of the Seattle Seahawks, Mariners, and at times, the Super Sonics—was destroyed. Maryland-based Controlled Demolition Incorporated was hired to do the job of imploding the 25,000-ton structure that had marked Seattle's skyline for two dozen years.

Remarkable about the event was the extreme measures taken to ensure no one was hurt. CDI had experience with over 7,000 demolitions and knew how protect people. Engineers checked and rechecked the structure. The authorities evacuated several blocks around the Kingdome. Safety measures were in place to allow the countdown to stop at any time if there was concern about safety. All workers were individually accounted for by radio before the explosives were detonated. A large public address system was used to announce the final countdown.

In short, CDI took every reasonable measure and more to warn people of the impending danger.

The Bible teaches of a final judgment and destruction for this sinful world. Like the engineers who blew up the Kingdome, our heavenly Father has spared no expense to make sure everybody can "get out" safely. He warns us through our consciences, through the prophets, through the Word of God, through the Holy Spirit, through the Church, and through his Son.

Two days have earned names on the church calendar: Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Yet in a real sense we live on Saturday, the day with no name. What the disciples experienced in small scale—three days in grief over one man who had died on a cross—we now live through on cosmic scale. Human history grinds on, between the time of promise and fulfillment. Can we trust that God can make something holy and beautiful and good out of a world that includes...inner-city ghettos and jammed prisons in the richest nation on earth? It's Saturday on planet earth. Will Sunday ever come?

That dark, Golgothan Friday can only be called Good because of what happened on Easter Sunday, a day which gives a tantalizing clue to the riddle of the universe. Easter opened up a crack in a universe winding down toward entropy and decay, sealing the promise that someday God will enlarge the miracle of Easter to cosmic scale.

It is a good thing to remember that in the cosmic drama, we live out our days on Saturday, the in-between day with no name. I know a woman whose grandmother lies buried under 150 year old live oak trees in the cemetery of an Episcopal church in rural Louisiana. In accordance with the grandmother's instructions, only one word is carved on the tombstone: "Waiting."

Though Jesus cast a vision for a better kingdom now and in the future, as long as it is Saturday, the fulfillment of that vision still awaits until Sunday dawns.

The church speaks the language of the End, so that we will know just how high the stakes are in the present.