Maybe you’ve been hearing this date talked about in the news. What’s it about? It’s not an upcoming political event or a big movie premier.
No, instead it is yet one more in an endless stream of tiresome predictions of the end of the world. The claim is that through numerological analysis of the Bible one can know with certainty that Jesus Christ is returning and the world is ending on May 21, 2011 (at 6:00 p.m. How’s that for precision!) And this time the claim originates here in our own Bay Area. (You won’t read the name or web address of the perpetrators of this prediction here. I don’t believe in giving good press to bad ideas.) Suffice it to say that a number of poor souls have left their jobs, their education, and even their families to wait for the end and to travel around and warn the rest of us about this impending day.
There is so much wrong with this prediction and its overall approach, that it’s difficult to know where to begin.
There is the fact, for instance, that the Bible is not a codebook full of secret numbers and messages. Instead it is a collection of stories that tells us the history of God’s salvation. It is a love letter from God to humanity, illustrating the sources of our troubles, and showing us the way out of them – following Jesus Christ in love, faith, and service. Anyone looking for secret codes and predictions in the Bible is looking in the wrong book. The Bible is telling us the story of God’s people in order to bring about faith. It makes no attempt to give an exhaustive history of the world. That is not its purpose. It focuses instead only on the higher, important moments of the narrative, and has many gaps that aren’t essential to it’s salvation story. Therefore, the whole attempt to fix dates is impossible. There is no way to know the date of creation from the Bible, for instance, so all subsequent predictions based on such dates are nonsense.
But a bigger issue is the validity of this kind of pursuit in the first place. The May 21 enthusiasts have elevated a side issue (the return of Christ) to a central place in the Christian faith. The timing of the arrival of God’s eternal kingdom is not to be an obsession that we focus on. The promise of eternal life is rather a hope that motivates and colors the rest of our life. Christian life is about faith and giving. Period. It is about growing in our relationship with a loving God, and through that relationship learning how to realize God’s love in our other relationships and in the wider world.
Do you want to be ready for Christ’s return? Live in faith, prayer, love, and service toward others today. Then do the same thing again tomorrow.
The 21st will fall on a Saturday. I hope your plans for the next day include going to church. In our congregation we’re having Confirmation Sunday!
See you on the 22nd!
Good post!
I like… “Do you want to be ready for Christ’s return? Live in faith, prayer, love, and service toward others today. Then do the same thing again tomorrow.”