I'm just not much of a date person when it comes to things like the end of the world. I'm not even entirely sure that there is a Rapture in the way that most Christians mean when they use the word. I do believe there is a day of reckoning and a day of judgement.
What specifically, makes you think these are the last days? Is it the war in Afghanistan and Iraq? I know that you mention chipping people a lot, but besides that.
North Americans are spoiled. Dreadfully so in that they haven't, in recent memory had a war that destroyed their infrastructure completely. The reason I am reluctant to speculate about any dates is that when my grandparents went through the Russian revolution, and others still through the second World War and Stalin's famine - things were so dreadful that to any human eyes it looked like the end of the world. Many believed it was the end of the world. This past century has seen dreadful wars, wars that engulfed the whole earth and numbers of people killed, that just to look at the numbers on the page makes your heart shudder.
How could anyone of that time not have believed it was the end of the world? And even before that, around the same general time period when Seventh Day Adventists were donning their white robes and jumping up and down on a hill in - New York State? - waiting for the rapture, Mennonites in Russia went through a similar thing, only they believed that Russia was the new promised land and that Christ would return there to set up His kingdom. And some others yet believed that the Temple in Jerusalem had to be rebuilt before Christ returned, and so they headed off to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. They became known as the Templers. Not those Templers from the Crusades - a Mennonite form of Temple-rebuilding Templer.
And when they couldn't rebuild the Temple, to make a long story short, most of them headed off to Australia.
As to a revival - was Dr. McGee talking about 2 Kings because of Elijah and Elisha? Elijah is supposed to return before Christ. I think that we aren't headed for any sort of revival here in North America. I think that the very evangelists that preach this message and preach politics from the pulpit and preach the prosperity gospel have so turned off the vast majority of people that if anything, they cause people to lose their faith entirely. Matthew 24:
And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
These pastors also tick off people who aren't Christians, to the point where Christians become their own instrument of execution. On the news now lately, there have been stories about some of their prosperity preachers and preachers who preach to their congregation about what political party they ought to vote for. But these same preachers cry foul and cite their first (I believe it is the first?) amendment rights when these same politicians or the general public points out their tax exempt status rests on the tolerance of the state.
I watched a commentator on CNN and he made the point that if the government limited the power of these prosperity gospel thieves and publicans, then a precedent was set for the government to come back to any church who supported a politician, and intervene there.
And I am thinking DUH!? Since when is it is the business of any church to endorse a politician or a certain way of political thought? The purpose of the pulpit is to preach the redeeming love of our Lord Jesus Christ. The church can't have it both ways, claiming separation of church and state while involving itself in affairs of state.
It isn't wrong for a church or an individual to speak out about issues of morality, to warn people against immorality. But it is very wrong and very wolf-in-sheep's-clothesish to use the pulpit politically, the way Jerry Falwell did, and the way Pat Robertson is doing now. Preachers who use the church to that end are doing one of the very things that was an issue in the Reformation, when the the Catholic church required rulers to pay it homage.
When Paul was brought up before Agrippa, (Acts 26) he did not talk about the problems that he was having with the politicians of the day or use that time to endorse one Jewish leader over another. Paul's interest was not in the kingdoms of this world, which pass away, which are temporal - his interest was the kingdom that was eternal - the kingdom of God. And Agrippa said to him, "Almost thou persuadest me to become a Christian."
I think it is shameful and an outrage what too many churches are doing, involving themselves in temporal matters of politics.
I know that often Christians say, well, they don't want to judge the state of any one's soul, ie, as in whether Pat Robertson is going to Hell in a hand basket but that really means that we are just cowards, living as though Christ were dead and not raised. Jesus had no problem speaking out about the hypocrisy of religious leaders in his time.
Jesus made it clear that in the last days things would be going on pretty much as usual, with people marrying and giving in marriage, and bridesmaids falling asleep waiting for the bride. I don't think we necessarily have much to look for in the direction of signs. God's time isn't our time. Two thousand years ago the disciples believed that Christ's return was at hand. How is one supposed to take that if one is a Biblical literalist?
That being said, just because there may not be a religious revival in North America doesn't mean that it isn't going on elsewhere in the world. The world is a big place. Revivals of a spiritual nature go on all the time in various parts of the world, big ones and littler ones and we never hear about it. But just because we don't hear about it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
(PS: the store had my stuff! I had left it there after all.)
Layla
