Heavenly Feast or Diabolical Disaster?

I'm sure you seen the headlines: May 21, 2011, 6 P.M. the end of the world is supposed to begin. Harold Camping, an engineer who owns a network of Christian radio stations, is predicting “The Rapture” will occur this evening beginning at 6 p.m. GMT. (Beware of theology constructed by engineers! They do better with airplanes and bridges.)

Adventists are dismissive Camping's predictions. We don't believe in the rapture, so his date cannot be correct. Officially, we don't believe in setting dates, though of course, date-setting is exactly how we got started 150 years ago. And there have been many unofficial date-setting movements within our church, including the “Seventh Millennium” movement which predicted the world would end in 1994, 6000 years after the putative date of creation. In fact, Harold Camping was a leading figure in the “1994 Movement” and many Adventists got caught up in the enthusiasm.

Camping and the Adventists were wrong then. Camping's wrong now. But his greatest error is not his date-setting. The most unfortunate effect of these endtime scenarios is the way they link the Second Coming with catastrophe. Ask any kid in a church that talks a lot about the endtime to describe the Second Coming, and he/she will reply with words about earthquakes, wars, famines, and false Christs. The return of Jesus is bad news.

Several years ago Adventist evangelist Shawn Boonstra presented a five-night series of meetings on the Second Coming. These meetings were electronically distributed across the entire United States. Thousands (tens of thousands?) gathered to hear his presentations. People invited their friends to hear about Jesus' return.

What did we hear? We heard about gloom and doom, about catastrophe and calamity, about crime and disease. In the entire five nights there was no sustained presentation about why anyone would want Jesus to return.

This is typical of Adventist discourse on the second coming. At best, it is a distortion of what Jesus taught. At worst it is a contradiction.

In Matthew 24 and 25 Jesus spoke about the end of the world. He acknowledged that calamity and spiritual darkness are common in the world. He specifically stated that these kinds of things would characterize the world until the end. He did NOT say that they would get worse. He did not say that they had to reach a certain level of awfulness before the second coming would occur. This Matthew discourse was in response to the misplaced desire of the disciples to know WHEN the end would come. Wrong question. You always get the wrong answer if you try to answer it.

When Jesus, on his own initiative, talked to his disciples about the end, his speech had a completely different tone.

According to all three synoptic Gospels, at the Last Supper Jesus spoke about his anticipation of reunion with his disciples. When Jesus dreamed of the end, he did not dream of earthquakes, wars and famines. He dreamed of a feast. He dreamed of sitting down at a grand feast with his disciples.

In Luke chapter 22, verse 16, Jesus tells his disciples, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” Then he goes on to say, “I will not eat it again, until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”

Later in the evening he said to his disciples, “You are those who stood by me in my trials, and I confer on you a kingdom just as my father conferred one on me so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.”

What does Jesus dream about when he looks forward to the future? He dreams of having dinner with his friends. He dreams of having dinner with you and me.

Jesus is not fascinated by earthquakes and wars and famines and plagues and terrorism. He's looking beyond those things to something really sweet, to something really good. He's looking forward to sharing dinner with you.

I wish Harold Camping was right about the date. I wish we were sitting down this evening to dinner with Jesus.

I can't control the date of the end of the world. But I can choose the focus of my attention. My dream is like that of Jesus. I do not dream about earthquakes and famines and wars. I dream of dinner with the Master. I can hardly wait.