The End is Nigh

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? “He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. ²⁴ You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. ²⁵ Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Ps 42:1-2; 46:10; 73:23-26) https://hymnary.org/text/thou_christ_of_burning_cleansing_flame

Introduction

The title of this teaching is a way of commonly mocking Christianity and its prevailing spiritual sense of the proximity of the End of all things.  In the middle of last night (18/4/25) the Lord’s Spirit took my mind back to earlier that day at a birthday party lunch shared by a small group of ordinary Aussies. They freely conversed about ordinary things reminding me of Jesus’ words.““But concerning that day and hourno one knows…but the Father only. ³⁷ For as were the days of Noah,  so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ³⁸ For as in those days before the floodmarrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, ³⁹ and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Mat 24:36-39). Nothing is wrong with eating, drinking, marrying, as such, but for the people of God such things are as sedate, ordinary and useless for the progress of the kingdom of God. Much like the middle-class preoccupation with cost-of-living concerns (cf. Matt 6:25-34). Where is the chronological urgency that came upon the Church when “the powers of the age to come” (Heb 6:5) visited her at Pentecost? Or the holy trauma of this text: “Now these things (judgement of sinful Israel in the wilderness) happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” (1 Cor 10:11). Hearing a sermon on Thursday from a classic Bible expositor I was overcome by the seeming impossibility of seeing his desire fulfilled amongst us. I believe we desperately need a seismic shift in our experience of reality.

Discipleship and Prayer

Despite exhortations to pray with Jesus, in the likeness of the Early Church (Acts 1:14), or like the 100 year Herrnhut revival prayer  (https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/one-hundred-year-prayer-meeting) it is left to a small minority to so  pray. We need a Holy Spirit impartation from heaven to lift us en masse out of our spiritual slumbers so that we experience union, with our heavenly High Priest and the Church interceding before the eternal throne of God (Heb 13:8; Rev 5:8; 8:4).  Likewise, repeated injunctions to live holy moral lives, either fall on deaf ears, induce frustration and despair or are perverted into legalisms. Paul understood the ethical difficulties of consistent Christianity so brings the experience of reality to bear by pleading: “What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; ³⁰ those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; ³¹ those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.” (1 Cor 7:29-31). I am a strong advocate for “marketplace Christianity”, but without a visitation of the baptism of fire (https://hymnary.org/text/thou_christ_of_burning_cleansing_flame) inciting familial conflict, passivity over business success prevails; “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! ⁵⁰ But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! ⁵¹ Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. ⁵² From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. ⁵³ They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:49-53).

A Peculiar People

An old in-joke throughout Pentecostal circles was based on the text of the KJV, “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar (NIV “chosen”) people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;” (1 Pet 2:9). John, characteristically, puts the emphasis on strange love, connecting this to the experience of the impending End: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ² Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ³ All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” (1 John 3:1-3) Jesus was always mysteriously “the last one” (Rev 22:13) come from heaven in the flesh (John 1:1-14) dwelling in time but from beyond time. True saints likewise partake of the “two-worlds” simultaneously.

Indispensable Everyday Miracles

The older I become the more I am persuaded that the miraculous is an indispensable element of contemporary Christianity. (See “Sustainable Power” by Simon Holley). I was therefore unsurprised when early on 18/4/25 Donna shared of watching on Netflix (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints_(film)) about the works of the Lord amongst a Myanmar Karen community in Tennessee. When she was finished talking, I simply remarked that the book on which the story is based was a while ago lent me by a local Karen friend. As two witnesses we agreed before Christ that God would do likewise in our midst. ““Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. ²⁰ For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”” (Matt 18:19-20)

Conclusion

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief (i.e. suddenly, unexpectedly, unwelcomed). The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. ¹¹ Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives ¹² as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. ¹³ But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.” (2 Pet 3:10-13) We speed the Return of Christ by longing for it via sharing in Jesus avid desire (Ps 42) for the coming conflagration and glory of the cross (Luke 12:50; John 12:27-28). As the dreadful earthquake in Myanmar has the ultimate purpose of provoking national revival, as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake (Richter 8) provoked the plea to a missionary friend, “Will he save us, Sally? Will he?”, finality, “It is finished” (John 19:30) must be an experienced dimension of Christian faith. Catastrophe and climax cannot be divorced in the life of the Bride and Body of the Son of God. The tissue holding all things together in Christ must be our shared experience of our mutual need for Jesus (Acts 1:14)! “He who testifies to these things (the Lamb who presides over the terrors and promises of Revelation) says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20) May we all prayerfully add our “Amens” to that of Jesus and his Church.