Monthly Archives: March 2011

Physics can say nothing about the end of religion

Posted on by
Reply

The BBC has a provocative link on its website “Physics predicts end of religion”. I think even they have realised how stupid that claim is, for the article at the end of the link seems to have been renamed, less controversially, Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says. Well, at least the BBC is accurate there: that claim is being made, in a study “reported at the American Physical Society meeting”.

In all of the nine nations in the study:

Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland

the main religion is Christianity. So the claim is essentially that the church will become extinct in these nations. And most of these nations are similar enough to the UK that any results could probably be extrapolated here – although probably not to the USA where the religious scene is very different.

So what can these physicists possibly have to say about religion? Have they discovered some fundamental particle which makes people religious, and which is decaying? No, nothing like that. As far as I can see, all they are doing is analysing the statistics showing a decline in religion, and tying them in with some theory, or speculation, about the “utility” of being a member of a social group.

Now it seems to me that here the physicists are dabbling in social science, outside their proper field of study. They may indeed have a better statistical model to offer, based on “nonlinear dynamics”, than the often flawed ones used by social scientists to make long term predictions – see my 2008 post Lies, damned lies and church attendance statistics, and the following discussion. But they can hardly claim to be experts on the central issue of their study,

the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

Indeed they seem to have completely missed the point here by presupposing that people call themselves religious because of “social motives”. Their study

posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.

Now this may be true of social clubs. It may also be true of minority language groups, as was suggested in a previous study which may be of interest to my minority language Bible translator friends. It may also have some validity for the kind of traditional churchgoing for social reasons which is indeed in steep decline, but not yet extinct, here in the UK. But it seems to me to miss the point completely concerning true biblical Christianity, which is in fact now growing here, to the extent that overall, as I reported in 2009, UK churchgoing is no longer in decline.

Although I was once a physicist, I make no claim to be a social scientist. But I have studied enough sociology to see a fatal weakness in the physicists’ argument. There are indeed social groups which people join because of their “social status or utility”, but there are others which they join because they are committed to a particular cause, which may be political, or perhaps semi-political like the environmental movement, or may be religious. The social dynamics of such groups are quite different from what the physicists seem to have modelled. Admittedly such groups tend to be small minorities; they can grow much larger but as they do they tend to change their character. But they can be large enough, and active enough, to be by no means “extinct”. Since the physicists seem not to have taken into account religious groups which follow this dynamic, their predictions are fundamentally flawed.

Anyway, sociological explanation is only part of the story. The physicists have left God out of the picture. But God is at work in his church, and we can be confident that he will not let it become extinct. Religion as a social club may indeed die. I would not be sorry to see this, although sad that it might mean the end of any Christian witness in some neighbourhoods and villages. But the true people of God, brought together not for “utility” but because they are committed to the cause of Jesus Christ, will continue to grow in strength and in numbers.

Why the fascination with prophecy?

Posted on by
Reply

Why is it that whenever I write on this blog anything about prophecy I attract far more readers than for anything else I write about? My post David Wilkerson prophecy: earthquakes in Japan and USA has been read over 1600 times in four days. The follow-up Rick Joyner on another Japan earthquake prophecy has been read over 800 times in 48 hours. By contrast, in the last week only one of my other posts, Why I am ignoring Japan, has been read as much as 100 times. So why do my mainly Christian readers have this fascination with prophecy?

For the convenience of those readers, I have set up a new category for this blog, Prophecy, currently containing the 22 most relevant posts over the last five years.

I think the underlying reason must be that Christian people are longing to find some significance in current events, especially in the turbulent times we seem to be in. These times are in fact probably no more turbulent than any others: what is new is only that turbulence from anywhere in the world is reported to us on a minute by minute basis on TV and the Internet. But what matters is the public perception that our times are unusually turbulent.

When we see natural or man-made disasters, none of us want to think that people have died for nothing. When wicked people seem to get their way, we don’t want them to go unpunished. And when we hear reports that God has given to his prophets advance warning of these events, we are at least reassured that he is in control and has not been caught unprepared. This much is certainly one of the proper purposes of prophecy.

The problem comes when we take this one step further. Somehow it is not enough for us that God is in control and will bring about his purposes at some time in the future. We long for God to intervene to put things right, and to do so immediately, on our timescales, not on his in which “a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). We expect him to take the same kind of action that the UN forces are currently taking in Libya, only more quickly and more effectively. If we had the chance to play God, we might have struck Gaddafi down with a thunderbolt and driven all his forces into the sea like the Gadarene swine. But that is not God’s way of working.

The issues get even more confused when we try to pin on to current events some kind of eschatological significance. We tend to assume that if God has foretold some event through his prophets it must be a sign of the imminent end of the world as we know it. We realise that only at the return of Jesus will all the wrongs in this world be put right. And we long for his appearing, as indeed we should do (2 Timothy 4:8).

The problem here is that, most likely, current events are not at all signs of an imminent end. This is the message of the passage from Matthew 24 which I quoted in my post on the David Wilkerson prophecy. History is littered with false prophecies that the end is nigh, just as Jesus predicted in that same chapter. Many of us will remember how 30 to 40 years ago Christian authors like Hal Lindsey predicted that the Cold War would lead to Armageddon and the return of Jesus. Today these “prophecies” look ridiculous. And very likely any predictions of eschatological significance to now current events will look just as ridiculous In another 30 to 40 years.

All this is not at all to discount prophecy today. God does seem to be giving to his prophets real advance warning of many of the major events shaking our world, literally and metaphorically. The purpose of these prophecies is not to satisfy our curiosity about the future. Part of it is indeed to reassure us that God is in control. But surely their main purpose is to warn us of how we need to repent, to change our behaviour, so that we are not overtaken by unexpected disaster.

When we read prophecies about earthquakes, and even ones about financial collapse, how often do we focus on dates and places and skip over the lessons on how God would have us respond? I confess to being guilty of this in my recent posts on prophecy, as I quoted only the predictions and not the lessons – although in fact the lessons were the larger parts of what Wilkerson wrote and Joyner said. But it is most unwise to ignore God’s warnings, as if we do we too might find ourselves victims of disasters which God allows to happen in this world.

Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus

Posted on by
Reply

Phil Zuckerman and Dan Cady explain in the Huffington Post Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus. Their perspectives on American Christianity, apparently as outsiders and unbelievers, are shocking:

The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Tea-Party-and-Religion.aspx) reveal what social scientists have known for a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus.

Of course this doesn’t exactly mean that they hate Jesus:

Evangelicals don’t exactly hate Jesus — as we’ve provocatively asserted in the title of this piece. They do love him dearly. But not because of what he tried to teach humanity. Rather, Evangelicals love Jesus for what he does for them. … And yet, as for Jesus himself — his core values of peace, his core teachings of social justice, his core commandments of goodwill — most Evangelicals seem to have nothing but disdain.

Now I’m sure the response of many politically (and perhaps also theologically) conservative Christians would be that the listed “policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus” are not in fact Christian policies at all. Indeed some of them are highly debatable, although others are not, such as supporting “punitive punishment over rehabilitation” and rejecting “anything that might dare to help out those in need”. And the article doesn’t mention another whole category of “policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus”, concerning family life, which are strongly supported by evangelicals but not so much by the liberal left which the writers seem to represent.

Nevertheless the way that a whole raft of right wing policies, those associated with the Tea Party, have become associated so closely with evangelicalism is a real scandal and stumbling block making it hard for unbelievers, especially those with more liberal views, to turn to Christ.

Of course the authors are right that

People look at the content of their religious tradition — its teachings, its creeds, its prophet’s proclamations — and they basically pick and choose what suits their own secular outlook.

North American evangelicals mostly support these policies because the majority of them are from socially highly conservative areas and strata of society. It would be interesting to compare the political views of evangelicals with those of their unbelieving neighbours: I suspect that there would not be very much difference. So the authors are again right when they conclude about these conservative positions:

it is just strange and contradictory when they claim these positions as somehow “Christian.” They aren’t.

Rick Joyner on another Japan earthquake prophecy

Posted on by
27

The well-known American charismatic leader Rick Joyner has joined me in publishing material on prophecies about major earthquakes in Japan and the USA. The prophecy I discussed was David Wilkerson’s prophecy from 1973. Joyner, however, presents a somewhat similar but more recent prophecy, from the late 1980s, given through Bob Jones. He does this in a YouTube video Special Bulletin: Japanese Earthquake, A Prophetic Demarcation in Time, Part 1.

Although this 29 minute video is divided into two sections by a “commercial break” promoting Joyner’s ministry, it is indeed only Part 1 of a series, with “Part 2 Coming Next Week”. Long term readers of this blog will remember that this is the same Rick Joyner who was involved with the restoration of Todd Bentley in 2009.

Concerning the Bob Jones prophecy, which was shared openly in the 1980s, Joyner now says:

The Japanese earthquake was something we were told over 22 years ago would begin the worldwide economic meltdown.

Now what does that mean? We need to understand what it means. See, it does not mean the end of the world. It does not mean the end of hope. It doesn’t mean the end of America. But we need to understand these times we’re in. To me this was a clear marker.

There was also other things attached to this prophecy about … There was a major earthquake coming to the west coast of the United States, and that it would not come until after the Japanese earthquake, the major Japanese earthquake that was seen. Now that doesn’t mean it was imminent to hit our west coast … (starting at 2:42)

There is a lot more of this video, mostly about the significance of these events and how people should respond to the prophecy.

Most of this I can endorse as good teaching, but I would want to be somewhat sceptical about the details especially in terms of predictions of the future. Also I would not count on Joyner’s political or economic advice as the best. As I concluded my post about the David Wilkerson prophecy,

These things are not so much signs of the end as warnings that Christian believers should stand firm, and that those who are not should listen to the gospel of the kingdom and start to follow Jesus.

Hope for Libya, despair for the Ivory Coast

Posted on by
1

It is good to see hope at last for Libya, after two weeks of generally depressing news. Muammar Gaddafi’s advance against those who have overthrown him has not been as quick as John Richardson feared nearly two weeks ago. But the advance was beginning to look unstoppable, at least by the people of Libya. It was worrying to see how a probably tiny number of genuine Gaddafi loyalist troops, heavily armed and supported by mercenaries, could drive back even the majority of the country’s army which had turned against their self-appointed leader. And it was horrific to see how Gaddafi didn’t seem to care about bombarding civilian targets.

So I am pleased to see that the United Nations has agreed on definite measures, and how quickly they have had positive results. Especially in the Arab world a show of strength is often what is needed. While the world dithered in its response, Gaddafi felt he could wage his civil war with impunity. Now that action against him has been agreed, he must have realised that the game is up for that approach. So he has quickly agreed to a ceasefire.

Of course we have yet to see if the ceasefire will hold. But we may yet see Gaddafi shifting to quite different tactics. Perhaps he will try to negotiate a settlement with those who oppose him, one which leaves him as leader of a reformed Libya. He will no doubt be desperate to avoid being sent to the International Criminal Court. But he has few options left. Perhaps he will after all fly off to Venezuela, one of the few places he might find safety.

Now some of you reading this may think that I am being inconsistent in supporting this UN action in Libya, because I have opposed similar action in Iraq and come close to a pacifist position. But I have never been a complete pacifist, and have never said I have been. I would not support an invasion of Libya with ground forces – nor does the UN. I do accept that in some cases, in the political arena rather than in the church, evil does need to be resisted.

But this resistance needs to be as non-violent as reasonably possible. It also needs to be well thought out, to ensure that the consequences are not worse than they would have been without resistance. The western intervention in Iraq failed on both those counts. The intervention in Libya envisaged by the UN would appear to pass these tests. It is of course even better if the intervention is not needed because the threat of it solves the problem – although that would not justify making threats of unjustifiable force, such as the mutual nuclear threats during the Cold War.

Sadly Libya is not the only country where this kind of intervention might be necessary. I am not thinking of Bahrain, where diplomatic action is likely to be more appropriate. Rather, I am thinking of the Ivory Coast. Eddie Arthur, who used to work there, has chronicled the crimes against humanity perpetrated by Laurent Gbagbo, the man who was defeated in the presidential election last year but refused to resign. Since Eddie wrote, Gbagbo’s forces have shelled a market in the capital Abidjan, and the UN mission has used the same words about this: “a crime against humanity”. Eddie quotes a Human Rights Watch director:

The time is long overdue for the UN Security Council to impose sanctions against Gbagbo and his allies …

Indeed. But unfortunately there is probably little effective action that the UN could take in the Ivory Coast, other than a full scale invasion which would probably turn into a bloodbath. Gbagbo is no more likely than Gaddafi to surrender himself to the International Criminal Court. So in response to the crimes against humanity in the Ivory Coast I can only recommend prayer.

Towards a Christian view on the Alternative Vote

Posted on by
Reply

John Richardson, the Ugley Vicar, asks Is there a Christian view on Alternative Voting?, and is “surprised at the overall silence on this whole topic.” This is in the context of the referendum on the Alternative Vote which will be held here in the UK on 5th May.

YES to Fairer VotesPersonally I am a convinced supporter of a YES! vote in the AV referendum. My only concern is that this is a somewhat half-hearted measure, less satisfactory than a full system of proportional representation. On the other hand, more proportional systems have other disadvantages, for example by breaking the links between MPs and constituencies. So I judge the AV proposal to be a good compromise which should be acceptable to almost all.

Of course I understand why some MPs are strongly opposed to the change: it means that all of them will have to work hard at every general election, as there will no longer be any safe seats. From my perspective that is also one of the best arguments in favour of change. For more arguments from the official campaign, click the YES! image.

I should disclose that I am still a member of the Liberal Democrat party, which has long favoured electoral reform and strongly favours a YES! vote in the referendum – although I am currently rather disillusioned with Nick Clegg’s leadership especially on the student fees issue.

But this is all from a secular viewpoint. Is there any distinctively Christian approach to this issue? The problem is that democracy is not really a Christian institution, although it has become a presupposed good at least among more liberal Christians. So how can there be a Christian view on exactly what kind of democracy is best? I can’t presume to give a definitive answer, but I can suggest a direction from which this can be approached, in the following principle which the apostle Paul outlined to the Corinthians and the Philippians:

I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

1 Corinthians 1:10 (NIV 2011)

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Philippians 2:3-4 (NIV 2011)

Now I accept that these appeals by Paul are primarily about relationships within the church, not in the political sphere. But surely they show God’s ideal for how all relationships should be conducted. So they can also be applied to relationships outside the church, including in the political arena – although as Christians we should not try to enforce them in a legalistic way on outsiders.

The principle Paul put forward can be summarised as that groups should seek consensus rather than divide along party lines, and should avoid pushing through decisions which might be against the interests of others, even if those others are a minority. I am sorry to say that this is very different from how political decisions have usually been made at least here in the UK. Indeed I think Paul’s words could be taken as a broad condemnation of making decisions on a majority vote, although there might be circumstances where that is unavoidable.

However, given that the UK is a democracy and no one, including myself, is seriously wanting to change that, then how can Paul’s principle best be reconciled with democracy? The ideal might be to elect MPs by a consensus of the voters in each constituency, and then for them to make decisions in Parliament by consensus. However, given the wide range of strongly held views among voters, there is no way that this could happen. Perhaps the best that could be hoped for is to find a candidate in each constituency who is acceptable, if not ideal, to 80-90% of the voters. But I don’t know how this could be put into practice.

Now the Alternative Vote is not going to deliver even this kind of partial consensus. But it will ensure that each successful candidate is acceptable to at least 50% of those voting. It will put an end to the current situation in which many MPs, and sometimes whole governments, are elected with the support of only one third of those who voted.

The Alternative Vote won’t mean the end of political parties. But it will make it in the interests of those parties to select candidates who can command broad support. Where extremists or people tainted by scandal are selected, even in apparently safe seats, they will be in danger from other parties working together against them. So AV will weaken extreme tendencies within parties and increase the number of MPs supporting moderate policies and consensus solutions. Even when there is not a hung Parliament, there will be less of the traditional rapid policy swings when new governments are formed. All in all, in Paul’s words, there should be more people “not looking to [their] own interests but … to the interests of the others.”

I hope what I have written here will help to guide Christian voters at the referendum in May. Personally I hope that you will join me in voting YES! But first you should think through the issues involved and come to your own decision.

Adrian Warnock reopens comments

Posted on by
Reply

It is more than three years ago that Adrian Warnock closed his blog to comments. I was very critical of this at the time. My main argument was that a blog without comments lacked any kind of accountability. In fact it was a monologue rather than a blog.

So I am very happy to see that Adrian has now switched comments on again on his blog. He is using a new Facebook comment system, which I guess is open only to Facebook members. We’ll have to see how that works in practice.

I hope Adrian doesn’t have the same problems with comment wars that caused him difficulties back in 2007. I will try to restrain myself from stoking up any such battles. But I do intend to start reading the blog again, and commenting from time to time.

I hope to remain friends with Adrian, and not just in the nominal Facebook sense. After all, I am much less critical of his thinking than I was having read, and reviewed, his excellent book Raised with Christ.

WordPress Jetpack and stats disaster

Posted on by
2

Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has announced a wonderful new plugin for self-hosted WordPress.org blogs. Matt Mullenweg, the inventor of WordPress, has enthused about it, calling it

what’s been a dream of mine for several years now … the vision I had for WordPress when I first founded Automattic five years ago finally coming to fruition.

This wonder is called Jetpack, promoted as:

Jetpack supercharges your self‑hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.

In other words, Jetpack allows bloggers like me who self-host our blogs access to some extra features previously available only for those who host their blogs at WordPress.com. Details of Jetpack can also be found at the WordPress plugins directory.

Hold on – where has Jetpack been announced? There is nothing about this on the WordPress News blog, where I would expect to see a mention of a significant advance like this one. It is not mentioned in the “plugins” box on my dashboard, as it is currently neither the newest nor the most popular plugin, and there is no link there to a broader plugin search page.

The only announcement I can find is on the WordPress.com users’ blog, in a post Boost your self-hosted WordPress with Jetpack. Not surprisingly this announcement confused many of its intended readers, bloggers who do not self-host their blogs but prefer to host them at WordPress.com, as this plugin is not useful and not available for them.

So how did I find out about this? Recently I had been making good use of the WordPress.com Stats plugin, also from Automattic, to track the now again growing number of visitors to this site. This morning that plugin suddenly stopped working. After a complex search of support forums I found that I needed to disable WordPress.com Stats and install Jetpack.

This process quite quickly restored the stats I was looking for, although the Incoming Links box is broken – it now shows only .links from 2009 pointing to an old address for this blog. I also gained some other nice looking functionality, including the Share button now on each post and page (click to share on Facebook or Twitter, or by e-mail, or to print the post). So I am not complaining about Jetpack as a product, only about how it was introduced.

What had happened? It seems that the stats plugin had been deliberately disabled because users were expected to switch over to Jetpack. The Jetpack FAQ notes that

As we upgrade each of our individual plugins to be a part of Jetpack, we’ll prompt you to switch over to the new, Jetpack-powered version.

Fair enough. But I was not prompted to switch over. Also the old, disabled, WordPress.com Stats plugin is not only still available with no warning message, but also one of the six featured plugins on the plugins directory home page!

What’s going on? Is there some kind of power struggle here between a WordPress.com group anxious to get their nice new features into self-hosted blogs, and a WordPress.org group who don’t want their boat rocked? Is one group deliberately sabotaging the other, by disabling the other’s stats, in order to get its way? Or is this simply a case of a company of techies not having a clue about marketing?

Sorry, WordPress and Automattic, but your Jetpack “blast-off” looks to be something of a disaster, at least in terms of public relations. You need to sort out this mess right away, by clearly announcing Jetpack to your self-hosted users and properly explaining the necessary upgrade paths. If not you will find your Jetpack powering WordPress straight back into the ground.

David Wilkerson prophecy: earthquakes in Japan and USA

Posted on by
429

I know I said I was ignoring Japan, but that was always meant to be hyperbole. I don’t want to get carried away into interpreting events there as more significant than they are. But I was fascinated to read the following, written by David Wilkerson in 1974, and quoted at The Watchman’s Cry Forum in December 2010 – so well before the recent earthquake in Japan (emphasis added by the forum poster, who is probably also responsible for the grammatical oddities):

Earthquakes coming to United States

The United States is going to experience in the not-too-distant future the most tragic earthquakes in its history. One day soon this nation will be reeling under the impact of the biggest news story of modern times. It will be coverage of the biggest most disastrous earthquake in history.

It will cause widespread panic and fear, Without a doubt, it will become one of the most completely reported earthquake ever. Television networks will suspend all programming and carry all day coverage.

Another earthquake , possibly in Japan may precede the one that I see coming here. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind about this forthcoming massive earthquake in our continent.

I am not at all convinced that this earthquake will take place in California. In fact, I believe it is going to take place where it is least expected. This terrible earthquake may happen in an area that not known as an earthquake belt. It will be so high on the Richter scale that it will trigger two other major earthquakes.

This is from Chapter 2 of David Wilkerson’s 1974 book The Vision. This is the same David Wilkerson who is best known for his 1963 book The Cross and the Switchblade. He later founded Times Square Church in New York City. I heard him speak in London in 2003. Although nearly 80, he continues to publish daily devotions (using Blogger software, but this is not a blog as comments are not allowed), but has not mentioned Japan recently.

Wikipedia offers a summary of Wilkerson’s prophecies as published in The Vision and elsewhere. Some parts of this have clearly already been fulfilled. These prophecies include the following from March 2009, published among Wilkerson’s daily devotions:

AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE – EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US.

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City. It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires—such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago.

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. …

How should we react to such prophecies? In the past on this blog I have discussed modern day prophecies by Smith Wigglesworth and Sharon Stone. On my understanding, the gift of prophecy today is not primarily about predicting future events. However, I believe that on occasions God does reveal the future to his people, not to satisfy their curiosity, but as warnings and to demonstrate that he is in control of events.

Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.

Amos 3:7 (NIV 2011)

Such modern prophecies should not be considered infallible. The prophets, however respected they may be as church leaders, are fallible human beings. Their utterances are not inspired Holy Scripture, not on the same level as the writings of the Old Testament prophetic authors – who were only a few of the many prophets operating in their time.

But when specific prophecies are made and come true, that tends to confirm the prophet and give greater credibility to his or her other prophecies. So it would be right for the people of the USA to take heed of Wilkerson’s warnings for his home country: a massive earthquake following the one in Japan, and major rioting in New York and elsewhere.

These prophecies should be taken as conditional, if the nation does not repent, as was Jonah’s biblical prophecy of the overthrow of one of the greatest cities of his world (Jonah 3:4). Also we don’t know the time scales involved: if the Japan earthquake was nearly 40 years after the prophecy, the US one may be even further in the future. It is wise to be ready, but not to panic. Wilkerson’s 2009 advice is good:

I will say to my soul: No need to run…no need to hide. This is God’s righteous work. I will behold our Lord on his throne, with his eye of tender, loving kindness watching over every step I take—trusting that he will deliver his people even through floods, fires, calamities, tests, trials of all kinds.

We should also avoid giving these events too much significance. They do not mean that Jesus is about to come again. He clearly warned:

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains. … 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Matthew 24:6-8, 12-14 (NIV 2011)

These things are not so much signs of the end as warnings that Christian believers should stand firm, and that those who are not should listen to the gospel of the kingdom and start to follow Jesus.

The wrath of God and apocalyptic events

Posted on by
Reply

I was surprised to find that more than a week had passed since I posted on The wrath of God, or the inevitable consequences of sin?, and that a whole week had passed since Sam completed his series on the wrath of God with part 4 and part 5.  I promised to comment again when the series was complete, but I have not yet done so, so here goes, briefly.

It is interesting to read that Sam sees the genocide in Rwanda as a foretaste of God’s wrath. I am happy with this as long as it is clear that earthly events are always a foretaste, never the fullness of God’s wrath. But would Sam say the same about more recent events in Japan? Is God’s wrath shown only when humans deliberately destroy one another, or also when natural or man-made disasters apparently accidentally to so?

A few days later Sam embarked on a follow-up series From Wrath to Apocalypse (part 1, part 2, still “to be continued”). I thought maybe this would be a quick response to the Japan earthquake and tsunami, but apparently like me Sam is ignoring Japan. However, his new series looks like a timely reminder not to over-react to apocalyptic predictions. Now I look forward to more from Sam on

what Jesus is doing is bringing “the end of the world” to bear on how people live in the present moment.