“The Day of the Lord”

Sunday, October 23, 2022

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. (1 Thessalonians 5.1-2)

There is a disturbing and harmful obsession with predicting the end of the world.  This has shown up in many different cultures and societies, across the globe.  For example, the Jewish Essenes made a rather confused and belated prediction that their war with Rome in the late 60’s AD would culminate in the coming of the Messiah.  For another, many North American Indians were swept up in a doomsday cult, the Ghost Dance religion, in response to continual encroachment on their lands and way of life in the late 19^th century.  Then there’s the Mayan “Long Calendar,” which outlasted the Mayan civilization by several centuries, but was incorrectly understood by many to predict the end of the world on December 21, 2012.  The Brahma Kumaris in India and Pakistan still believe nuclear war will soon end the world as we know it and usher in an eden-like restoration.  Our own society has generated many predictions of doom due to global cooling global warming climate change.

But a far greater number of apocalyptic predictions have arisen from professing Christians, who were

waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! (2 Peter 3.12)

Christians are supposed to be thinking about the world to come, more than the present darkness; and yet we’re also supposed to live in the present age, in such a way as to lay up treasure in heaven.  This undue focus on eschatology—the doctrine of end times—distracts from our responsibilities in the present.  From Montanus’ 2^nd-century prediction that Christ would return and set up his New Jerusalem at Pepuza, oh, any day now, to Pope Innocent III’s papal bull of 1213, asserting that Islam’s 666 years were mostly spent, after which the “beast” would be destroyed, to Harold Camping’s numerous 20^th- and 21^st-century predictions of the rapture and end of the world (of which he later repented), there has been a steady stream of date-setting.  It’s probably unnecessary to point out that not a single one of these predictions has proven correct.

Why do people do this?  Partly, it’s because we’re impatient, and partly it’s because we hate not knowing.  The prospect of waiting patiently for an event we believe will take place, but at an unknown time, combines these two aversions and leaves us in misery, so we seek the knowledge, but we also tend to place the date just around the corner.  Did you notice that every cited example put the appointed date within the expected lifespan of the would-be prophet and his audience?  This trend prevails for the overwhelming majority of the hundreds of doomsday predictions, with only a few exceptions.  Supposing yourself to know how much time you have left would be a great comfort and motivator.  But what did God actually say about it?

Notwithstanding the “time, times, and half a time,” the “thousand years,” or the “weeks’ appearing variously in Revelation, Daniel, and elsewhere the the Bible, there’s no date predicted for Christ’s return, nor is there sufficient information to accurately deduce the date—there’s not even a consensus interpretation on what are all the events that will surround that day, and it’s a fool’s errand to attempt to pin them all on a calendar with precision.  God doesn’t want us to know the details.  He said so himself.  In 1 Thessalonians 5 (quoted above) Paul reminded Christians who were “idle” (5.14) that they didn’t know exactly when “the day of the Lord” would come.  They needed reminding, because they figured, why work for a living, when Christ is coming back so soon?

But, while “concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Mt 24.36), it’s obviously pretty important!  That’s why Jesus so often said things like, “you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (v44).  It’s why Paul had taught the Christians at Thessalonica about the second coming of Christ in the first place, and why God gave John the visions of Revelation to spread around to the churches in the late 1^st-century.  The point wasn’t just to inform; it was to prepare.

But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. (1 Thessalonians 5.4-6)

Paul doesn’t mean that our lack of surprise should stem from knowing the date beforehand.  He means that, whenever it takes place, Christians should be ready.  God hints at some of the details, but none of them matters as much as the central fact, that God

has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17.31)

Do you believe in the appointed judge, and his resurrection?  Are you ready for his return?  Don’t get caught up in the silly and pointless attempts to predict the day and hour.  Instead, put that energy into serving him, and being ready, whether he returns today, tomorrow, or in ten thousand years.

Jeremy Nettles

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