| Terror
attacks offer preview of 'last days'
Thursday, April 11, 2002
By GREGORY RUMMO
NO ONE WILL ever
forget the video of airliners flying into the World Trade
Center on what is now simply known as "9-11." Taken
along with the scenes of thousands fleeing the collapsing
structures amid smoke and fire, these apocalyptic images have
led many to ask: "Is the end of the world near?"
This question is born of a natural curiosity
that is not peculiarly Christian. The success of the
bestselling "Left Behind" series by Tim LaHaye and
Jerry B. Jenkins attests to this fact. The attacks in America,
coupled with escalating violence in the Middle East directed
at God's chosen people, the Jews, point to world events that
will culminate with the return of Jesus Christ.
Curiosity about the last days is hardly new.
Last-days prophecy makes up a huge portion of the Bible. Both
Old and New Testaments have plenty to say about the future of
the Earth. Much of it is vivid in its detail. Two days before
the death of Jesus, his disciples asked about the future of
their homeland.
"What will be the sign of your coming,
and of the end of the age?" (Matthew 24:3). In the Olivet
Discourse, Jesus explained: "Watch out that no one
deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am
the Christ,' and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and
rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such
things must happen, but the end is still to come. "Nation
will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There
will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these
are the beginning of birth pains. Then you will be handed over
to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by
all nations because of me. "At that time many will turn
away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and
many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will
grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.
And this
gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a
testimony to all nations, and then the end will come"
(Matthew
24:4-14).
The key to understanding end-times prophecy
is a realization that the Jews are at the epicenter of world
events and the focus of God's love and attention. They have
remained God's chosen people throughout history.
While some of the promises God
made to the Jews as a nation have been delayed,
they have not been deleted from his plans.
In "Things to
Come" (Zondervan, 1978), J. Dwight Pentecost writes:
"The entire passage in Matthew 24 and 25 was written to
answer the question concerning the signs of Messiah's coming,
which would terminate the age. The Lord is giving the course
of the end of the age prior to the establishment of the
Kingdom as it relates to Israel and Israel's program."
In "The Gospel According to
Matthew," Arno C. Gaebelein agrees. "This is the
right and only key to understand these verses ...the Olivet
discourse of our Lord is a prediction of how the
Jewish age will end."
The events outlined in Matthew read like
front-page headlines. Wars and rumors of wars, nations against
one another, famines, earthquakes, false Messiahs,
and a continuing and intensifying hatred of the Jewish people
are happening right now.
But Jesus explains that
these events are a mere foretaste of more horrifying woes. The
details can be found in the Bible's final book,
Revelation.
Written in complex,
symbolic language, the book describes the apostle John's
heavenly visions of divine wrath, judgment, and the ultimate
triumph of good over evil. Scholars have debated its meaning
for centuries.
Revelation depicts such events as the
destruction of all living creatures in the oceans, intense
heat and darkness over the whole earth, global economic chaos,
the worldwide collapse of major cities, and the death of at
least one-third of the earth's population from disease
(Chapters 9 and
16).
Jesus, speaking of that
time, said: "Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of
what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be
shaken" (Luke 21:26).
But God never leaves humanity without hope.
As numbing as recent events have been and as bleak as
humanity's immediate future looks (apart from any worldwide
outbreak of repentance), Christians have no need to fear.
Jesus assures his followers: "When
these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your
heads, because your redemption is drawing near" (Luke
21:28).
On the day Jesus Christ ascended to heaven,
two angels asked those who had assembled themselves to witness
the event, "Why do you stand here looking into the sky?
This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will
come back in the same way you have seen him go into
heaven" (Acts 1:11).
Similarly, when the members of the
first-century church in Thessalonica worried about the end of
the world, the apostle Paul reminded them that Jesus Christ
would come back to Earth with the angels to remove those
Christians who "are still alive and are left" (1
Thessalonians 4:13-17), prior to the Great Tribulation,
described in the latter half of the book of Revelation. Paul
admonished the believers not to fear but to "encourage
each other with these words" (1 Thessalonians 4:18).
During today's perilous times, we who have
read the Bible and know its author personally have the
divinely appointed responsibility to do likewise.
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Gregory Rummo is a business executive who belongs to
Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Paterson. You may e-mail him
at The Record at: Religion@northjersey.com.
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