My issue with the end time is that it is 2000 years late and
counting. And if I get a dollar for every time I am told that our generation is
living in the end time, I will be as prosperous as a megachurch preacher by
now.
You see, I grew up in the end time actually. In my early
years of being a Christian, end time prophecies were the rage. It was even more
popular than hello kitty and those cabbage patch dolls. If end time was a
commodity sold or a collector's item to be horded, the
queue for it would
stretch much longer than the queue for National Day parade tickets.
I recall when I was in my late teens, my church and youth
pastor would wax lyrical (or
paranoia) about the end of days. We would immerse ourselves completely, almost trance-like, in that culture of tears
and fears, running around like feverish, hormone-raging marsupial mice praying
overnight to prepare ourselves for the final countdown. Like the virgin brides
waiting for the glorious groom, we made sure
our lamps had an overflow of oil.
The last thing on our mind then was to be caught unprepared, unaware and thus come
undone.
My recalling of those frenzy days were as glaring as a
ketchup stain on a white, creaseless executive shirt. There was just an
undeniably vibrant bond of trembling esprit
de corp about living in your last days or last hours. Nothing spooked us
more than pending doom. I have to admit that I was totally sucked into the
end-time vortex and I bought it hook, line and sinker
.
The camaraderie of morbidity is just infectious. Imagine a
group of young hot blooded Christians coming together huddling in one corner
thinking that tomorrow may very well be their last day on earth. Nothing
congeals faith and quickens passion more than to embrace the end of days with a
fatalistic zeal. We had literally elevated reality and surrealism to a whole
new level of conviction and conflagration. Our obsession and asceticism were
out of this world. We abstained from almost
everything in order to be ready and
worthy of our imminent savior. We just wanted to be as pure as a saint and as
white as bleach.
I remember our church leader told us to go cold turkey
with the world and all its worldly things. We fast everyday (at least skipping
a meal or two). We avoided watching tv programs calling it "devil-vision". We stayed away from
newspapers with all its negative reporting. We also attended prayer meetings,
end-time seminars, went wild with spiritual gifts, and immersed
ourselves in a
culture of praising and worshipping with monastic fever. In short, we were
totally enraptured by the pending rapture and we went to the extent of demonizing
the naysayers, the faithless choruses, and the doubting Thomases. At that time,
anyone not with us is against us. Sounds
like the making of a sleeper terrorist cell right?
Of course, any sane observer would have concluded that we
had pushed things too far. That's
extremism on steroids! And that much is admittedly undeniable. I
guess the
extremist will never admit that he is extreme just as the deceived will never
admit that he is deceived. And if ideas made this world and most of them
subsequently unraveled it, then the idea of end-time made us and will soon
unraveled us too.
When Jesus first said that he will return in Matthew 24,
John 14:3, and the same is encapsulated in the Nicene Creed, the world since
then has been waiting. We were and are all waiting for the end of the end. If
the early apostles had held their breath for the Second
Coming in their time,
they would have fainted and awaken to find that it is just not going to happen
in their lifetime. Neither would it be happening anytime in the 500 years after
their demise or for that matter, the next 2000 years before the Y2K.
Of course, the scriptures have made it clear that nobody
except God knows of the day and the hour. But many have come forward after the apocalyptic
promise to proclaim with clear-eyed assurance that the end time will happen in
their lifetime. Every generation was specifically
singled out for the end-time
showdown parade but only God knew when it was going to end and it was just
ain't so. If a thousand days in the house of God is but one day, then Jesus'
death and resurrection was just the day before yesterday in God’s IWC. I guess
only Einstein and his theory of relativity truly understood the eternal concept
of time and the religious fanatics are just way off by, say, a few million
God-years?
Still, time and time again, the self-proclaimed favored
sons and daughters of god were
repeatedly proven wrong. What was deemed as
absolute certainty by these end-time prophets with all the signs and wonders following turned out to be an embarrassing oversight with no apology extended
(not even an "Oops! I did it again"
blush). The whole drama was like a fool's rehearsal. The fateful day came and
went and the crestfallen members disbanded not to be discouraged even the
slightest - mind you - but strangely
emboldened even more by the hope that the next
time will be the right time for
the end time. Go figure. And I wonder
whether God was secretly chuckling or visibly frowning..mm…
The excuses given for the false alarm would have thrown a
sincere seeker of truth off his logic steed but deluded members lap it up like
starving dogs on a tight lease. Here is one of the excuses for your
indigestion, "Because of your
faithfulness, god has held back the end time." Or try this for an
oversize, "it is not going to happen
today because there are many who are still lost." I can imagine Bernie
Madoff and Ken Lay giving somewhat similar excuses and getting away with it!
Somehow,
just for religion and religion alone, the
dye-in-the-wool believers give it a very wide margin of error and an never-ending
stretch of tolerance. I guess the little prophetic shepherd boy who cried end-time wolf was given more than three
strikes before the village idiots call his bluff. If anything, the wolf wailer
escapes every time, on end-time, for
all time, with credibility literally unscathed.
Then, there are the saner section of the religious
population pinning for that eternal beam-me-up-scotty
hope. For them, it is about the season and not the exact date. So the wait is
for a season, and god forbid, a
lifetime. And for them, the season is...waitforit...NOW!
Their generation of course. Surprised?
The strange thing is that their end-time apocalyptic clock is
always counting
down but unlike the New Year's celebrative countdown, this is one countdown that is
perpetually counting off. I suspect it is also self-resetting too.
Again many in this group had come forward to tout and
start the seasonal end-time clock and proclaimed that it is going to
happen in their lifetime. Unsurprisingly, they lived and died and went quietly
into the night. It was a darn long season of waiting and the only end time for
them is the end of their time on earth.
And now we come to
our present age. This is the age of the
enlightenment and technology. It is the Internet age where everything is
possible, permissible and conceivable. Ideas in our age not just make and
unravel the world, it goes wild with it. My own Church is one of the frontrunners
of this end-time-is-going-to-be-in-our-lifetime
message. Many church leaders are also riding on the same He-is-coming-back bandwagon. Some are
even telling you which national leader is the anti-Christ. They are
usually the
well-known celebrities like Bill Gates, Obama and Putin, and never that unknown
old man running the mama shop at Ang Mo Kio block 74 or that middle-aged lady
selling mee siam in Toa Payoh hawker center.
Well, since no one knows when is the end time ending soon,
there is just no way one can tell for sure whether they are right or wrong. God
plays no favorites on this sacred issue. Our heavenly dad is blissfully mum
about it. Members would just have to keep watch and pray and also be prepared
to
be disappointed and then forget all about it the next day and keep watch and
pray again. The strategy here is to never be the first to blink until of course
your mortal end comes and you blink for eternity.
Here I can only hope that the end time will come in my
generation, preferably after my kids have grown up and have kids of their own.
I guess we have already waited 2000 years and what is another, well, twenty years or more? If not, I
would remind my kids at my deathbed to be looking out for the end time
and
allow them some indulgence to have their own preferred dates for its arrival.
I would also expect for some of us out there, who are
closer to their graves, to wish that the end time will arrive sooner, maybe, in a years' time. And for the fanatics, those who interpret every littlest
natural disaster and political cracks as god-winking signs of the coming end
time, I guess they just can't really wait for it. And given a choice, they
would wish that it happens tomorrow (that is, if climate change does not wipe
us
all out of the face of the earth like a worldwide Noah septic-wash).
I guess if all of us had our way, the end-time would have
happened at the time when the first converts of Christ roamed the earth. And if
that was so, the rest of us thereafter would not have existed. This would
indirectly mean that we will be blessedly spared from this endless, and
sometimes mindless, debate about the coming of the end time. Cheerz.
* Image from ucg.org.
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