Apocalypse When?
Sermon for Second Sunday before Advent – 17 November 2024 – All Saints, Kesgrave
Text: When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. (Mark 13v7)
God give you peace my sisters and brothers.
I don’t know why I do this. I try not to do it but the crowd and peer pressure pushes me forward to the front and I do love a bit of limelight. It happens whenever my friends and I are going to Wembley or Twickenham we, and everyone else in the queue, are greeted by an earnest young man with a megaphone who tells us all that we’re all going to the Place Down Under, and I don’t think he means we’re up for a cruise to the Antipodes!
I always attend such occasions wearing a dog collar (years of boarding school life has drilled me into always travel in ‘uniform’) so the young man’s eyes light up when I approach him, greet him as a fellow follower of Jesus, and ask if I might say a few words to the gathered throng. Every time, I think he has a poor memory for faces, he hands me the megaphone and I proceed to tell the gathered throng that Jesus loves them and if He were at the game He would be cheering for my team and then Jesus would stand us all to a pint of beer in the pub afterwards. The crowd loves this, my young friend less so. Last time at Twickenham he turned off the power for the megaphone on me…
Prophets of Doom, Masters of the Megaphone, Saints of the Sandwich Board, whatever we call them have always been around. Spreading doom and gloom with such earnestness and intensity that I sometimes wonder if they are secretly enjoying sending everyone else to hell.
Perhaps they have read a little too much into the words we have just heard from Mark’s Gospel and are over eager to answer the question of the disciples which Jesus refuses to answer. It’s almost as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – War, Famine, Pestilence, Death – have been joined by a fifth called ‘Fake News!’ Misinformation as the tool of the greedy and corrupt has been around long before the age of Social Media and what our eldest son calls ‘TwitFace’.
Jesus predicted this when he sidestepped the disciples desire for a time and date for the end of the world and told them this truth;
Many will come in my name, claiming, “I am he,” and will deceive many. (Mark 13v6)
How many will come in Jesus’ name? Let me count the ways.
Counting only the major predictions of the Apocalypse we had:-
11 in first 10 centuries since the birth of Christ
8 in next 5 centuries
61 in next 5 centuries
62 in 20th Century – including 4 different dates by Herbert W Armstrong he of the Worldwide Church of God and The Plain Truth Magazine, alone!
And so far this Century we have had 40 apocalyptic predictions! But we’re only one quarter done so watch this space as we have plenty of room for even more Fake News that completely misses the point of the teachings of Jesus.
(Oh and by the way there are already predictions for an apocalypse in the years 2129, 2239, and 2280. I have no idea how the Lord God Almighty fits all this into the diary!)
What is the point of all this?
In fact why were the disciples concerned about when the end would begin?
What is so important about the destruction of the Temple that they want to mark it as a Red-Letter Day in their calendars?
Biblical scholars will remind us that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans soon afterwards in the year 70 and that the early Christians living there had been warned by a prophecy to abandon the city and flee to the nearby settlement of Pella a few years before. So this conversation between the disciples and Jesus may be Mark reading back Current Affairs into his Gospel story.
But this doesn’t answer all the questions about when the Apocalypse will occur that have ensued since.
After all what would we do differently if we knew which day the world was going to end…?
Surely all followers of Jesus, along with the disciples, are living their best lives for God and each other already…?
Or are we…?
Could it be that if we knew ‘the hour and the day’ of our Lord’s return we might be tempted to behave a little more like Christ as the Day approaches? And what kind of fair-weather (or more correctly Apocalyptic-weather) disciples would that prove us to be?
In the end I guess this is the point my young friend with the megaphone at Twickenham is trying to make. Get your life sorted before it’s too late to sort it.
Perhaps we each need to buy one of those coffee mugs that proclaims ‘Jesus is coming, look busy’ to remind us that we do not know the hour when all this will happen (Mark 13v32)?
So how do we respond to the wars and rumours of war? The world continues to find itself in a sorry state. This past week our nation has once again reflected on wars past and present and I despair that we will ever learn any lessons. We seem to share a lunatic gene that drives us to think that the only way to world peace is yet another war.
What does Jesus advise us?
‘Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, “I am he,” and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, (Mark 13v5-7)
There will be many voices (remember the Fake News horseman of the Apocalypse?). There will be wars and rumours of war. Temples will be torn down and tyrants will do what tyrants do. It seems as if nothing will remain. All this Jesus proclaims but also, later in the chapter he offers a comfort for our fears and a solution for our sinfulness:
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away (Mark 13v31)
Jesus is indeed coming and we must needs be busy about the business of God but we will not know what we are to do unless we learn to listen deeply to the Word of God.
We stand on the brink of Advent, our yearly remembering of those preparing for the Nativity of our Lord, which is also our yearly reminder that there will come a time when we have run out of time.
Now, is the time to listen.
Now is the time to ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’.
Now is the time to repent of those things that have kept us far away from God.
Now is the time to look again at our prayer life.
Now is the time to dive more deeply into our reading of the Scriptures.
Now is the time to open our ears to hear God’s word and our hearts to receive God’s love.
This blog ‘Apocalypse When?’ is copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2024. It may be reproduced free of charge on condition that the source is acknowledged.
The destruction of the temple and signs of the end times
As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!’
2 ‘Do you see all these great buildings?’ replied Jesus. ‘Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.’
3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 ‘Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?’
5 Jesus said to them: ‘Watch out that no one deceives you.6 Many will come in my name, claiming, “I am he,” and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth-pains. (Mark 13:1-8)
Suffolk Vicar 