Let us Pray - Lord God, Creator and Maker of us all, speak in the calming of our minds and in the longings of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord and help us to respond in faith both now and always. Amen.
Today's texts deal with the coming of the end of time as we know it
- the time when God arrives to judge the world
- the time when the Son of Man gathers the elect from the four corners of the world.
The Rev. William Peake once wondered HOW THE MEDIA WOULD HANDLE THE END OF THE WORLD and he put together a few possible headlines. Here is a sample of what he wrote:
USA Today: WE'RE DEAD.
Wall Street Journal: Dow Jones Plummets as World Ends.
National Enquirer: O.J. and Nicole, Together Again.
Inc. Magazine: 10 Ways You Can Profit From the Apocalypse.
Rolling Stone: The Grateful Dead Reunion Tour.
Sports Illustrated: Game Over.
Playboy: Girls of the Apocalypse.
Ladies' Home Journal: Lose 10 Pounds by Judgment Day with Our New "Armageddon" Diet!
TV Guide: Death and Damnation: Nielsen Ratings Soar!
Discover Magazine: How will the extinction of all life as we know it affect the way we view the cosmos?
Microsoft's Web Site: If you don't experience the rapture, DOWNLOAD Software patch RAPT777.EXE.
America Online: System temporarily down. Try calling back in 15 minutes.
You know my brothers and sisters-in-Christ - as much as most people try to deny it - the end is coming. Science tells us this, experience tells us this, and the scriptures tell us this. And it will not be some temporary system failure. Rather it will be a complete crash - a crash that will bring in its wake a new heaven and new earth - and not merely some patch, some fix it quick continue as usual remedy that allows us to go on as if nothing had happened.
And that should catch our attention. It should make us think.
The end is coming. That is the plain truth of the bible.
It's both its prayer - as in the reading from Isaiah this morning
"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence" and it's promise
"But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory
The end, my friends is coming - it is coming to each one of us individually - a fact which cannot be denied and which ought to be enough to make us think and it is coming to all of us together to our whole world to the sun and the moon and all beneath them.
It might be sooner - or it might be later. But it is coming.
We now have the technology to darken the skies, and to make the heavens shake and to cause stars to fall from heaven.
We now have the means to bring about what is described in the Book of Revelation: the means to cause 1/3 of all the birds of the air to perish and 1/3 of the fish of the sea to die.
We can assemble with very little problem at all an army of two hundred million men on the fields of Armaggedon - which do not lie all that far away from the nation of Iraq, and we have built already the scorpions that have fire in their tails and the machinery by which the whole world might see the death of two men, two witnesses to God's love, in the city of Jerusalem.
And if we have the means to make it happen - perish the thought we should actually do so then how much more so God?
- the God who through the prophets spoke of it thousands of years ago,
- the God who through his son - promised it - indeed warned us of it, not quite some two thousand years ago.
From the fig tree learn it's lesson. As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.
The season of Advent is about the coming of the Lord - the coming of the Lord as a babe in a manger in Bethlehem - and the coming of the Lord as a judge in power and might.
And the question of the season, the challenge of the weeks that lie ahead of us is this -are we ready?
Are you ready to meet God?
Are you ready to stand before the judgement seat?
Are you ready to welcome the new world?
Are you ready to see the old world come to an end?
The question for you and me and for the world is not are we ready in the sense that some survivalists are ready for the next big war - but are we ready for Jesus? Are we ready for the time when the world is judged - when we are judged.
The question is not have we saved enough canned food and toilet paper in our basement shelters, incidentally for those of you are visitors to Hong Kong, there are no basement shelters here in Hong Kong - but have we prepared our eternal soul to dwell in heaven.
The question is not whether we taken our resources and converted them into physical assets where neither stock market crashes or computer failures can affect them - but whether we have taken our resources and converted them into spiritual assets - the assets that never pass away even though all other things will cease.
There are some things that we can take with us - and there are other things that we cannot. The question of Advent, is are we ready? Are we awake? Are we prepared?
Our hope is that God will redeem our world.
The question is - are we ready to be redeemed?
Are we allowing the potter to form us - his clay?
Or are we thinking that the day of the Lord will never come?
It is coming my brothers and sisters-in-Christ. For us all - ready or not. May you - may I, be alert and awake. Amen
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