A new book by Ruth Graham (daughter of evangelist Billy Graham) has just been released.
The title of the book is the perfect attitude to take with all “end of the world” stories: “Fear Not Tomorrow, God Is Already There.”
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The Bible teaches that everyone really, deep down, believes in God, and that deniers of God’s existence are merely rejecting that truth in favor of their own sinful lifestyles (Romans 1:18-32).
Any apocalyptic fear of 2012 proves the point that people worry about their relationship with God. Fear of death accompanies lack of faith.
Everyone is unsettled by death, but those who are right with God can face Earth’s end with relative peace.
NASA has now pointed out the fallacy of the movie’s premise of catastrophic planetary collision, and I think they make a good sense.
Besides this, the Mayan calendar is hardly an authority on God’s timetable. Mayans were polytheistic nature worshipers who took human sacrifice to incredible bloodthirsty lengths. They had no prophetic pipeline to God, and if their insights reflected the view of Satan himself, it would still be only the guessings of a subordinate. Mayan civilization also went extinct, so how’d they miss that date if they had any special knowledge?
Christians vary on ideas about end-times. Historically, more would say the terminus arrives with Christ’s Second Coming, but popularly, there are all sorts of left-behind scenarios and 666 conspiracies.
I’m with the first group, believing it comports more reasonably with scripture, but it’s not an issue essential to anyone’s Christianity.
Whether the final event is the sudden Parousia (Second Coming), or comes with preliminary prophetic plights, the Bible doesn’t pinpoint dates.
It only says there will be an end, and we must be faithful until then. God’s people then inherit heaven, and the atheists and evil-doers are banished to a hellish, godless eternity (whatever that’s like).
So I don’t worry about the end, and certainly not about Hollywood’s fantasies regarding it.
I don’t take my cues from Pagans, and I frankly don’t mind if it happens tomorrow.
My sins are forgiven; Christ is my savior, God is my father, the Holy Spirit is my companion, and the three are one.
Like the old hymn refrain, “What have I to fear, what have I to dread?”
THE REV. BRYAN GRIEM
