Kirkepiscatoid

Once again, Carrol did the sermon since Wallace is on vacation. Unfortunately, the Lectionary dealt her a bad hand (Daniel 12:1-4; Hebrews 10:31-39; and Mark 13:14-23.), all apocalyptic stuff. (We were teasing her in our church book discussion group Monday night that Wallace might be planning his vacations by the Lectionary..."Hmmm....bunch of apocalyptic stuff coming up...Yuck!.....think I'll bolt and let Carrol do it..." )

But, she handled it really well and gave me a good way of looking at it. In her sermon, she pointed out the early Christians thought the end of the world was coming in THEIR lifetime, so that was some of the impetus for at least the NT apocalyptic stuff. Just goes to show you that there are people in every generation that think the end of the world is coming. She also pointed out that a lot of these verses tend to cluster near the end of the church year, in preparation for a new beginning, Advent. She also reminded us that despite all the fearmongering in some parts of Scripture, that if you look in the Bible when God actually makes His presence known to people in the stories of the Bible, they are frequently told, "Be NOT afraid," or, "Fear NOT."

In other words, God does not want to spook you or creep you out. When you feel His presence, the last thing He wants is for you to be afraid of him. But in times of trouble and tribulation, you still need to turn to him.

I have never been too creeped out by all that end times stuff in the Bible, mostly because it's really hard to interpret in a modern light. A lot of stuff in Revelation appears to be aimed more at the Romans when you interpret it in the light of history. Also, the way I figure it, when you die, it's the end of your world in this world no matter whether the rest of the world is going down the tubes or not, so the main thing is to focus on living your life in a way that "the end of the world" doesn't matter in terms of your relationship with God.

I also remind myself there was a fair bit of controversy when the books of the Bible were being selected about Revelation, and even the scholars of medieval times had a lot of trouble with that book. There are several books of the Bible that I have thought more than once, "What were they smokin' the day they voted on Revelation (or some other books that are hard to interpret.)?"