Tidings for Tuesday
And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 2 Peter 3:4
In 2002, Mark Steyn, a columnist for the National Post, wrote the following in a satirical article: ‘With enough oil for a century and a half, the planet awash in cut-price minerals, and less global famine, starvation and malnutrition than ever before, the end of the world has had to be rescheduled. The latest estimated time of arrival for the apocalypse is 2032.’ Without realizing it, Steyn’s mockery of God’s purposes for the ages was a perfect fulfillment of the words of our text today. Some 23 years later, Steyn might well rewrite the same tongue-in-cheek piece of foolishness. In his eyes and in his mind, nothing has really changed. As a secularist, he fails to see the signs that Christians find so glaringly obvious in our world today. Don’t get me wrong, I am not setting dates here for the Rapture to occur. You and I both know that this great event could occur before you have time to finish reading this message, or it could occur hundreds of years from now. But I don’t think it’s far off, and neither do you.
Just like the people Peter was writing about in our text, Steyn didn’t see anything different from what has always happened. His secular eyes see only the advancement of women’s rights in the laws that now allow women to abort their babies right up to and including the birth of the child. But Christians see this as a major part of the great rise in violence and bloodshed that will accompany the last days. Steyn would also see the collapse of public morality and the unchecked promotion and exaltation of homosexuality as a human rights advancement and a sign of ‘progress’. But Christians see these things as evidence that the deceivers are causing our world to wax worse and worse (2 Timothy 3:13). Steyn would see nothing out of the ordinary in the chaotic events of the middle east or of the arrogant militancy of Russia. But Christians see in these things the lines being drawn that could well foreshadow the great battles of the end times as revealed in the book of Ezekiel.
The ungodly see no reason to suspect that the day of God’s judgment is drawing any closer. But to the readers of the Word of God, the Lord is actively working out His purposes and we are living in a day when we can eagerly anticipate His swift return for His people. Perhaps today! -Jim MacIntosh