THE END TIMES AND THE TIMES OF ENDING

A Sermon by Joseph C. Hough, Jr.

President, Union Theological Seminary

Scripture Readings: Revelation 6: 12-17; 21:1-8

I have chosen selections from the Book of Revelation to be read on this occasion for two reasons.  First, there are Christians, using the book of Revelation as their guide, who have seized on fear generated by the bombing of the twin towers, the continued killing in Israel and Palestine, the war in Afghanistan, the Iraqi war, and the continuing threat of terrorism to intensify speculation that these events are foretold in the Book of Revelation.  That in turn means that God is acting to bring the world to the End Times. 

Second, there is another way of reading the book of Revelation that sees God acting quite differently to sustain our faith and hope in these days, days which for many of us are not the beginning of the end.  These are, indeed, for all of us very painful times.  Yet while the tragic destruction so widespread in our time are not the final times or end times, they have been for many of us Times of Endings. 

The End Times

First, the End Times.  Fascination with predicting the End Times began long before John wrote the Book of Revelation.  It is rooted in the Jewish tradition as early as the exile of the Jewish people to Babylon 587 years before the Christian era. The book of Ezekiel, written in the context of the exile, is the best example of the ancient yearning for divine intervention to punish the wicked and oppressive enemies and to restore the land of Israel to the Jewish people. John, a Jewish-Christian leader in what is now the nation of Turkey, was very familiar with this ancient Jewish tradition.

Said to be exiled to the island of Patmos by the Romans because of his strong opposition to the emperor cult, the author, a Jewish member of the Jesus movement, wrote to encourage his fellow members who were subjected to sporadic and severe persecution during the latter part of the first century of the Christian era.    Many of them were terrified.  They saw only death as the end to their suffering at the hands of their neighbors and of the imperial authorities.  Some defected.

Drawing heavily from the visions of Ezekiel and Daniel, passages in Isaiah, and from Greek mythology familiar to his readers, John wrote to assure his fellow members of the Jesus movement that their sufferings were not in vain and that it was finally God, not Caesar, who would bring an end to their sufferings and reward them for their faithfulness. Given the times, it is hardly surprising that some Christians, even then, read the book as a prediction of the End Times, the second coming of the Messiah, to destroy the wicked and then to redeem the whole world.  The End Times had been part of the expectation of the Jesus movement since its beginning.

Since the first century, nearly every major war, epidemic, volcanic explosion, or earthquake has prompted some Christians to believe that a particular event in their time was the beginning of the End Times. Yet the book of Revelation has had a troubled history in the life of the church. It was not even included in the earliest canons of the New Testament.  Even after it was included, leaders of the church viewed it with suspicion.  In the fourth century, Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem actually forbade Christians to read the book either in public or in private.  Augustine warned against the use of the book to predict the future.  Neither Luther, nor Calvin, nor Zwingli thought it worthy of much consideration, and the lectionary of the Greek Orthodox Church omits Revelation completely.  Church leaders throughout Christian history have warned against the use of the images and legends in Revelation to predict the End Times, citing Jesus' own words that not even the angels in heaven know when he will come again. Yet after all the failed predictions of the past, recent events have sparked a new upsurge in warnings and predictions that the End Times are at hand.

On July 1, 2002 Time magazine featured a cover article on the growing popularity of the use of the book of Revelation to understand the meaning of the events of 9/11. Prominent in this movement is Tim LaHaye, who with his ghostwriter Jerry B. Jenkins, is the author of a series of ten fictional books based on the book of Revelation.  The ten works in the series have sold more than 35 million copies.  The ninth book in the series was the best selling fiction book in 2001.  The tenth book in the series has been on the New York Times’ list of fiction best sellers for more than a year. 

The books have made LaHaye and Jenkins rich beyond their wildest dreams!  And they have had a major impact on growing numbers of Americans.   A recent poll indicates that 25% of all Americans believe that the events beginning with September 11th were definitely predicted by the book of Revelation.  More than 59% of Americans believe that the events described in the book of Revelation literally will come to pass.  The establishment of Israel and the migration of millions of Jews to that country; the war in the Middle East; the growing preoccupation with Saddam Hussein; and the continuing and growing threat of terrorism have created an apocalyptic frenzy in America. 

Most American Christians who are preoccupied with the imminent arrival of the End Times believe that only those who are Christians and who hold beliefs similar to their own are to be counted among the righteous remnant to be saved from destruction.   What is more, those who are convinced that the final judgment is near to hand are not content to watch and wait on God.  They are taking actions to help God along in making their dire predictions come true. 

For example, recently, the members of a huge fundamentalist church in Nashville, Tennessee, raised the money to fund the emigration of 400 American orthodox Jews to Israel.  Ralph Reed, former organizer for Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and now chair of the Republican Party in Georgia, supports efforts to fund the return of Jews to Israel. You see, the apocalyptics among us believe that all of the Jews must return to Israel before the Day of Judgment and the End Times.  For the same reason, they actively and uncritically support Israel's stance and policies in the conflict with the Palestinians. 

In the past, Hitler, Stalin, and even the Pope have been anointed as the anti-Christ by various Christian fundamentalist groups.  Saddam Hussein is currently the most popular anti-Christ, succeeding the most recent nominees like Mao Tze Tung, Kruschev and Gorbachev.   Osama bin Laden is a favorite nominee for others.  Since Saddam and bin Laden are part of the forces of evil, our war against them is believed to be fully justified no matter what the consequences are to the people they control and to the future of our own nation.  And these wars are seen as part of God's overall plan for the End Times, because they constitute the preliminary events, those conflicts that precede the great battle between the forces of good and evil--the battle of Armageddon described in Revelation.

For several reasons, I am alarmed by this kind of thinking. 

1.  Preoccupation with the End Times cuts the nerve of social conscience.  It drives us to ignore very real human problems and to absolve ourselves from any responsibility for dealing with them.   The budget for the occupation of Iraq now estimated by none other than Donald Rumsfeld is at more than $100 billion per year (and some analysts think that is too low).  Just think what that could do for those in need here in the United States.  That amount would solve the problems of Headstart, school aftercare, and insurance for the millions of uninsured children.  In another year, the money spent in Iraq alone would make secure the future of many elderly people in American whose lives depend on Social Security and Medicare. Our support for war is killing every program that we have created over the years to help those who are most vulnerable. And that is only what would be possible in the United States.  If we expand our vision to the globe, the cost of the war in Iraq could have saved the lives of millions of AIDS orphans, and eradicated measles, the number one killer of children.

Of course, no one can doubt that there would still be enough happening to move all of us to sense a very serious time of limits, a Time of Endings.  Global threats such as mounting deaths from malnutrition, uncontrollable disease epidemics, overpopulation, spreading wars, the availability of weapons of mass destruction, the destruction of our air, water and land--this leaves little doubt in our minds about the vulnerability of our beloved world and its people. But this is of no concern to true believers who are sure that we are close to the End Times. Do you remember the pronouncement of our former Secretary of the Interior, James Watt?  Mr. Watt, a declared fundamentalist and apocalyptic, once remarked that destroying the four thousand-year-old mighty redwoods of California was not a problem.  This, he said, was because Jesus was coming again in the near future, and the whole world would be destroyed and made new anyway. Then we would have new giant redwoods again.  This sort of thinking is pathetic, and when there are real dangers to our world, it is frightening.  Preoccupation with the end times kills the nerve of social conscience.

2.  Preoccupation with the end times promotes the identification of the good and evil people and nations.  This is especially a problem for our own country.  Our history began with a claim that we were a new Jerusalem. The bow of the Mayflower had hardly touched the sands of Plymouth before Governor Winthrop claimed that the settlement would become a city set on a hill to be a light to all the nations.  This is the triumphal language of the book of Revelation, and our foreign policy is shaped by this claim more than we want to admit.  It leads us to impose political and economic policies on other nations that are not at all appropriate and often destructive for them.  It infuses our thinking with pride, with a patriotism that is totally uncritical.  This is a national sin, a sin of arrogance that has led us too often to see our nation as an exception, an island of righteousness in a sea of corruption.   This national self-congratulation does not do honor to America.  And as the sin of pride, it contradicts our own Christian faith traditions.

3.  Preoccupation with the end times results in predictions of catastrophic events, thus giving credence to exaggerated and dangerous fears of the “others”.  When that happens we begin to sacrifice our liberty in the interest of security--something to our abiding shame we Americans have done before in recent times.  In the 1940s in the name of national security, it was the internment of Japanese Americans and the confiscation of their property, a sin for which President Reagan apologized and for which some minimal compensation was given; in the 1950s it was McCarthyism, a national disease that led to indiscriminate attacks on civil liberties.   Hundreds of individual lives and the lives of whole families were ruined in the name of anti-communism.  Today it is the ruthless and relentless attack on civil liberties of Arab Americans in the name of national security and the labeling as traitors those who object to this lack of faith in our traditions of fairness and freedom. 

And there is also the temptation to assume that any criticism is treason.  The editor of the Wall Street Journal just last week identified the organizers and members of MOVE ON, a peace advocacy group as sympathizers with Saddam Hussein.  As a member of MOVE ON myself, I find this chilling and appalling.  It is rotten journalism and reminiscent of the McCarthy era.  The very idea that dissent is labeled treason in this country is unacceptable and unworthy of a great newspaper.  This is absolutely contrary to our highest democratic ideals.  It is not only unfair.  It is un-American.  It is a sin of self-righteousness and an act of injustice against our neighbors. 

4.  And finally, when the claim is made that only Christians of a certain type of belief are to be saved from destruction in the End Times, Christians become arrogant about our knowledge of God. Even Calvin urged Christians to be humble.  The fullness of God, he said, is far beyond what we can imagine.  Christian arrogance about our knowledge of God in turn breeds a divisive Christian exclusivism, an exclusivism that has no real basis in our faith and only makes inter-religious respect and understanding impossible.  And this is not in the spirit of Jesus Christ.

For all these reasons, Christians should abandon the preoccupation with predicting the End Times from this enigmatic last book of our Bible.  Not only is it an exercise in futility, it is morally wrong. It leads us not to paths of righteousness but to self-righteousness.  It leads us not to do justice.  It leads us to deny justice.  Preoccupation with the End Times is also a politically dangerous exercise.  It can lead Christians for religious reasons to offer uncritical support for dangerous political practices and policies that clearly are not even in America's national interest.

The Spirit of God and the Times of Ending

If there is no basis for predicting the End Times from the book of Revelation, what is the message to Christians who experience Times of Ending? 

The Times of Ending are those moments when there is a shared sense of vulnerability, a sense that life is uncertain, that much of what we believed to be under control might not be. Of course, all of us know that our lives are unpredictable, that death can come any moment of any day, that venerable institutions that we love can be threatened with instability, that businesses can fail, that jobs can be lost, that marriages fall apart, that relationships are destroyed, that our children are vulnerable to many kinds of destructive influences, influences over which we have no control. And these fears can drive us close to despair.   Right now, today, here in this congregation, every one of us has experienced the hurt that comes with Times of Ending and that leaves on all of us scars of disillusionment and pain.  We are constantly reminded each day of the vulnerability of life, a vulnerability that brings before us the contingency of our hopes and the fragility of our personal and social arrangements--the props we depend upon for our being comfortable in the world. In these ways the Times of Ending constitute the boundaries of individual lives and the lives of families and friends.   And these Times of Ending hurt.  They hurt down deep in our hearts. 

But something more has happened since September 11^th 2001.  We know now that we are vulnerable as a nation--vulnerable in a way that we had not really felt before.  The World Markets Research Center in London, advisers to more than 500 major world corporations on the threat of terrorism,  released a report last Monday (July 18 from NYT July 7)  identifying America as the fourth most likely nation in the world to be subject to a terror attack during the next twelve months! Only Columbia, Israel, and Pakistan are in more danger from terrorists.   With all of our military might, with all of our vaunted economic power, we now know that we are not as secure as we had imagined.

So what is the message of the book of Revelation to those of us who often live in the reasonable dread and sorrow of Times of Endings?  That message is very simple.  John assured the Christians under the persecution of Rome that no Time of Ending is the End Time. 

“Behold, the dwelling of God is with human beings,” says John, “God will dwell with them and they shall be the people of God.”

Like Paul, John assures his readers that God is at work to bring good out of evil.  Now this is not a message about a God who at all times and in all places is in control.  I long ago left behind this impossible vision of God.  Powerful forces of injustice and cruelty are set loose in the world by human agents and agencies who are filled with hate, envy, murder, and the desire for domination.  And they do kill, and they do hurt, and they do destroy.  That is the message of the first part of Revelation. John knew all that and he warned his readers that the fire was coming.  But John reminds us that God still dwells among us; that wherever human hearts move beyond hate, fear, vengeance and self-righteousness; wherever human hearts move toward hope, compassion and forgiveness, God is there, working for good in our troubled world.

A year ago I attended The New York City Opera's performance of Dead Man Walking.  Most of you know the story from the book or the film by the same title.  The opera is a beautiful and moving account of the effort of a Louisiana nun’s, Sister Helen Prejean, attempt to bring some human kindness into the last days of a convicted killer of two young people.  The condemned man, Joseph De Rocher is hardly receptive to her ministry at first.  He vigorously denies all the charges against him and swears that he is innocent of the crime. He is, at first, very cynical about her attempts to reach him with human kindness.  As time goes on, she persists, and as he dies she is there at the execution chamber with him. 

I shall never forget the power of the closing scene.  Just before Joseph is brought into the death chamber to die Sister Helen meets with him briefly and declares God's love for him.   She then says to him, "Joe, when you go into the chamber I shall be there.  Look at my face, and see my face as the face of Jesus Christ."  "Look into my face and see the face of Jesus Christ."

And you and I see the face of Jesus Christ in all the faces who surround us with

compassion.  When we have suffered, when we have been fearful, we looked

around us, and in the faces of those who love us, we saw another face—the face of

Christ.

We know then, as Paul said, that God is working everywhere for good, and through the eyes of faith we see it, we know it, and we are not deceived.

“Behold the dwelling of God is with us," said John, and God was and is there for us even now.  In the times of ending, God is there giving us hope and inviting us to a new beginning in a new world of justice, love and peace.  That, and that alone is the final message of the book of Revelation.

XXX

The Reverend Dr. Joseph C. Hough, Jr. is president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he serves as its William E. Dodge Professor of Social Ethics.  Previously, Dr. Hough was dean and professor of Ethics at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee.  Earlier, he served on the faculty of Claremont Graduate School and was dean of the School of Theology at Claremont (California). 

A native of rural Norwood, North Carolina, Dr. Hough was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, graduated from Wake Forest University, and holds graduate degrees from Yale University. 

Now an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, Dr. Hough is the author, coauthor, or editor of several books including Christian Identity and Theological Education; Beyond Clericalism: The Congregation as a Focus for Theological Education; Theology and the University; and Black Power and White Protestants.