Not like the 1970s

Back in the 1970s, lots of people were saying we were in big trouble, running out of oil, and so forth. Looks like they were wrong, so why should we pay attention now?

Sharon Astyk explains here what the differences are, but also why they weren't so wrong in what they actually said, rather than what people remember they said. It deserves a careful read.

The odd thing is that Christians are always saying that Jesus is returning any day, in which case things must be desperate and about to hit the wall. At the same time, they're always ready to hear from Rush Limbaugh and other such false prophets that everything is fine with the empire and that those that think the wheels are coming off don't know what they're talking about. Some mutually exclusive ideas need to be rubbed together between the ears of such folks, I'd say.

Thing is, what Jesus and the apostles said about the end applied right then, when spoken to people that were at least 2000 years from that event. If we don't know how those words applied to people listening as Jesus spoke, who would definitely not see his return, we don't have any idea what he was talking about.

If you expect to see how his words apply, you have to stop reading into it that Jesus will be coming tomorrow while the world we're in love with is doing just fine and our favorite empire and "our troops" are taking great care of us - or worse yet, the silly stuff about Christians being whisked out of their SUVs as they're rolling down the freeway.

How do these words make sense no matter when he returns or when the world ends, if we have no idea when that is? You know, we really don't!

In fact, Matthew 24-25 is how it looks whenever the wheels are coming off any civilization, even the relatively minor unraveling of 1914-1918, nonetheless horrifying, which in hindsight clearly was the beginning of the end of Western Civilization - this whole comfortable way of floating above it all and being able to do without God's provision because we've become so good at strip-mining the earth and those on it who aren't as good at killing and robbing as the enlightened West, so that we can live independently of the God who made it all.

So it was, in a small way, when Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem and exiled the people from their earthly kingdom because God had seen enough of them using it to prostitute themselves to this world, so that the land could rest at last. It was the same when Rome unraveled, because again the Christians worshiped it. And it is again the case today, and again because the Christians have given themselves up to the worship of the kingdoms of this world - the United States most of all, only because it is presently the gaudiest, most arrogant, and most full of the worldly power that modern Christians have chosen instead of the cross.

One thing the Bible makes clear is that bowing down to Satan in order to receive the kingdoms of this world, as Jesus refused to do, never works in the end, although it starts out looking great. And that's what we do, when we rely on these kingdoms through stealing, killing, destroying, and lying - the deeds of Satan - to fight our battles.