Amos starts well as a prophet, prophesying the Lord's
judgment on Israel's neighbors. It
always wins over your audience when you prophesy ill for those they already
hate. Amos' prophecy begins by
denouncing the Syrians, certainly a popular thing in Israel then and now. It is not for one thing that the Lord is
judging them, His complaint has many counts of wrong-doing. He has tolerated this for a time but now
their sins have multiplied and they will be dealt with accordingly. They will lose their land and go into
exile. So far so good, our enemies are
being judged according to their sins.
Jesus, in His last few days with the disciples, wants them
to know the truth about what is to come, beginning with the destruction of the
temple. This, as much as His words
concerning His own future, would have seemed completely out of place with
messianic expectations. The temple
wasn't going to be destroyed when Messiah came, it would be renewed and
restored as the pre-eminent place not only in Jerusalem but in the entire
world. The disciples are startled by
this revelation of destruction. By way
of preparation Jesus tells that there will be signs in heaven and on earth and
there will be wars and natural disasters but first the disciples will be
persecuted, imprisoned and put to death.
All these happened in the lifetime of the apostles but they also happen
in every lifetime. The words are not
only for the twelve but for all disciples at all time. We should always be prepared for the end and
for persecution, Jesus says it is our time to shine.
The Thessalonians seem to have been a bit obsessed about the
end times and also quite convinced it was going to come sooner rather than
later. They ask for knowledge of these
things but Paul responds by more or less saying, what difference does it
make? You have work to do and
righteousness to pursue so why bother seeking for signs of the end. A decade or so ago the United States
Christian community was similarly obsessed with the end of things, lapping up
the series Left Behind and its fictionalized theology with passion. Did that passion for information about the
end change anything? Did it cause
Christians to witness to their friends and tell them the truths they so
desperately needed to know. The church
has a job to do and our problem is we continue to seek to know these things
rather than telling what we know for certain.
No comments:
Post a Comment