Dear one,
With our focus upon Afghanistan, amid the rise of covid19 and its consequences, within some circles that perennial question has surfaced: Are we in the “end times”? With covid, are we seeing the rise of a worldwide Government, signaling the end?
Perhaps foolishly, given the limits of this blog, I would like to ponder with you, if not definitively, a direction my thinking takes in answering these questions. Without doubt, however, recent events might cause us to wonder, even as previous generations asked: Is Hitler the Antichrist? or, is Pope Leo X the Antichrist? or, Is Domitian the Antichrist?
In response to these questions, I would first observe that the phrase, “end times” and/or “last days” ( ἔσχατα ἡμέρα), occurs 13 times within the New Testament. As a comparison, the word “love” as noun and verb ( ἀγάπη/ ἀγαπάω), occurs 260 times; whereas the word “Christ” (Χριστός) occurs 516 times.[1] Admittedly, the frequency of these words does not tell the whole story; and yet, their frequency does suggest that the New Testament writers gave far greater attention, and presumably urgency, to “love” and “Christ” than they did to “end times.” This does not mean that “end times” or eschatology: the study of “last things” is unimportant; but it does suggest to me that the New Testament writers would that I might give far greater energies to the nature, work, and identity of Jesus Christ, and to my living the greatest commandments (i.e., you shall love the Lord with your entire being, and your neighbor as yourself), than to my seeking to pinpoint when the end will occur.
Moreover, and of far greater import to me, Jesus readily conceded that He knew not the day nor the hour; rather this mysterious knowledge lay/ lies within the Father’s purview (cf. Mark 13:32/ Acts 1:7). Without question, He spoke of an end and of signs or portents that would accompany that end (or at least the end of the Temple: Mark 13:5-8); nonetheless, it will come as a thief in the night (Matthew 24:43).
Are we living the last times? I believe we are (1John 2:18); I also believe that those days began with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, and therefore, as He admonished, we are to watch, and as we watch, we are to love as He does. The important question is not: When is the end? but rather, Will I faithfully love unto the end?
Watching with love,
Stan
[1] Cf. Concordance to the Greek New Testament, I. Howard Marshall, ed. (London, T&T Clark, 2002), pgs. 6, 7, 426, 1098-1105.