Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Last Days
Commentary
for the September 7, 2024, Sabbath School Lesson
"Pray that this will not take place in winter, because those
will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the
world, until now--and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short
those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has
chosen, he has shortened them." Mark 13:18-20, NIV
This chapter in Mark is parallel
to Matthew 24. It can be confusing for it seems to be referring to the
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE by the Romans. However, the superlatives attributed
to Jesus bring that into question. Jesus said the destruction he was
foretelling was unique, unequalled before or after. It would be hard to assert
that the death or enslavement of a few hundred thousand Jews in 70 CE was a
larger event than the murder of over six million Jews by Adolf Hitler's Third
Reich. And even that event failed to usher in the apocalypse that many expected
to result. It may be that instead of referring to a single event, Jesus was
speaking of a situation that would exist on the earth from the time of his
ascension until his return. If we consider the horsemen of Revelation, chapter
6, popularly known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, though the Bible
never refers to them by that title, they represent Conquest, Warfare, Famine,
and Death.
Historically, these four have
been riding through the earth for eons. Seldom has there been a time when they
have not been rampaging somewhere on the planet. Even now, the war between
Russia and Ukraine, Israel and the Palestinians are only two conflagrations
that stand out among others where we also see the results of the work of each
of the four. Their purpose is not to justify what they are doing. They simply
exist and cannot be entirely thwarted no matter what we do to achieve peace and
tranquility on this side of Eden. Of course, these horsemen are only metaphors,
else we could restrain them somehow and find the peace that eludes humanity.
The sad truth is they represent what lies in our hearts. The Germans have a
word for this -- Schadenfreude. It means to take delight in the misfortunes of
our enemies. For instance, if someone cuts us off in traffic and we take
delight in seeing them pulled over by the police further down the road. Instead
of loving our enemies as Jesus taught, we take delight in seeing them get what
we feel they deserve. But there is a fine line between such a spirit and the spirit
of vengeance. That spirit keeps a tally of wrongs and seeks to even the balance
by inflicting equal or greater damage in return. This can go on for so many
generations of tit for tat that no one even remembers who perpetrated the first
slight.
The result of such behavior can
be anxiety over whether when one leaves their home they will live to see it
again. We can see that anxiety play out when people feel the need to arm themselves
out of fear for their lives or the lives of their loved ones. Some have called
such fear irrational. Although it was the case in the past, we no longer have creditors
battering down our doors and selling us and our family into slavery to pay for
debts we have defaulted on. In many ways we are more secure than our ancestors,
yet many of us are armed to the teeth because of anxiety and fear. That fear produces
a rationale that we had better get the other person before they get us. But in
the absence of the ability to see into the hearts of others to discern their
intent, we end up fearing everyone is a malicious actor, sealing ourselves off
from meaningful, positive social interactions for fear of what might result,
even when there is no basis for such fear. This has also been the cause of the explosion
of road rage incidents in this generation. Too many are operating under the
assumption that other drivers have an evil intent, though they may have simply
made a mistake and done something stupid. When we decide to respond by making
our displeasure and condemnation of the other driver clear, escalation follows
and as has happened where I live and doubtless many other places as well, one
of the drivers never makes it home to their family, bleeding out in a city
street because a cycle of rage was allowed to run rampant.
The point I am making here is
that the evil Jesus spoke of has been with us continually because of the
hardness of our hearts and is not necessarily about 70 CE or an event relegated
to a distant future. The apocalypse is ongoing and has been sweeping millions
beyond the gates of death and therefore beyond further hope for something better.
But we do not have to live in that reality. The apocalypse and the kingdom of
God exist side by side in our world. We are a divided world. While it is easy
to allow tempers to flare and get caught up in the cycle of vengeance, there
are those who have chosen to be citizens of God's kingdom. They have
surrendered their pride and their tendency to be easily offended for a better
end. God has promised that everyone who comes to him can have a new heart. (Ezekiel
36:26) Our fears have caused us to turn our hearts to stone lest we be
taken advantage of or even murdered. So, we build a barrier between us and the rest
of the world to protect what little we have. We do not realize we will have to
walk away from all of it sooner than we think. Then we will understand that
what we thought was important was not, but it will be too late to seek that
heart change that allows us to see the world with a proper perspective, a
perspective that reveals that it is people and not things that matter.
Once an active, loving relationship
with God blossoms, we discover that the Four Horsemen were not ethereal
phantoms haunting the earth. The four are us without that regenerative
connection with God. We see ourselves as rulers of the world, fighting those
who challenge us. Our actions bring famine to others while we eat ourselves into
obesity. Those who resist our greed and selfishness then meet our other side,
the side that brings death with his pale horse. The cycle repeats millions,
billions of times over the face of the earth, bringing darkness where there
should be light. But at the same time there are those who have discovered a relationship
that changes them for the better, and love for others is
breathed into their hearts as a Lebenswort, life word, to regenerate
their hearts. In one sense we become a new creation because we have not lived with
such love in our lives before. But in another sense, it is only a recreation of
what humanity was created to be before things went awry.
The world has come to oppose
such a restoration. We can look around us at the evil perpetrated and
constantly presented to us by the news and respond with how the world would
have us respond, with anxiety and fear. But love can sweep away that fear if we
let it. (1
John 4:18) We were never meant to live like this. We were created in God's
image (Genesis
1:26), and that image is love. (1
John 4:8) A heart filled with fear and anxiety is never free; it wanders
from one fear to the next always chained to those fears, but Jesus would grant
us the keys to be free of those chains. (John
8:36)
We live in madness in a world
gone crazy with fear, but like the demon possessed man whom Jesus delivered
from the myriad demons that ruled his life, we can be free of our fears also. As
he did, we can sit at the feet of Jesus in our right minds, breathing in the
atmosphere of love and compassion that over time changes us to be all that we
were intended to be by our Creator. Some think that by extracting a set of
rules from the Bible, this will save them from a world gone mad. That is like
trying to save a marriage by crafting a list of rules both parties must obey.
But happiness in marriage is not obtained that way. Happiness derives from the love
that exists between two people. This is why Jesus referred to his followers as
a bride and himself as the bridegroom. He wants that kind of happiness in the
relationship between us. In Luke's Gospel and Acts, he refers seventeen times
to the joy that arises from our relationship with Jesus. Love is the power that
drives that joy. As the folk hymn says, "The joy of the Lord is my strength."
We can have that love and joy by exchanging our fear and anxiety for them through
Jesus.
When I learned to swim, I had to
overcome my fears of what might happen if I went into the water deeper than I
could safely stand in. Once I overcame that fear, I could enjoy swimming and
have done so many times since. But I could never have had that experience if I
succumbed to my fear of drowning and avoided the water. In fact, learning to
swim is what enabled me to overcome that fear. Our relationship with God is
like that. We cannot know the freedom from fear until we step into that water
and discover we can swim.