Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mitel!Software!watson@uunet.uu.net (Steve Watson) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Landmarks of the End Times Message-ID: Date: 24 Dec 90 09:12:19 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Mitel. Kanata (Ontario). Canada. Lines: 82 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Well, the signs of the Second Coming debate is heating up again. Once more, into the breach.... In Steven Timm writes: [Quotes of Matthew 24:29, Revelation 6:12,13 deleted. Look 'em up] >Note that the dark day of 1789 which was a visible phenomenon in most of the >Eastern United states, and was not associated with an eclipse. That evening >the moon appeared as blood. Q: Do you have a reference on this? Do you claim it to be a supernatural phenomenom or a natural one? >1833 saw a dramatic meteor shower (Perseids, >I believe) which was one of the brightest ever recorded. [deleted] >Steven Timm Physics Department Carnegie Mellon This sounds like a novel interpretation: in imaginative accounts of the Tribulation, I've seen these signs placed quite close to the End. This is the first time I've seen anyone connect them with events occurring 100's of years before the Parousia. In any case, I'm skeptical: meteor showers are common enough, including impacts of various sizes, and they've been happening since long before the time of Christ. To try and interpret the 1833 shower as a specific fulfillment of prophecy is stretching things more than a little, IMHO. Predictions of the Second Coming can take one of three forms: 1) A specific date. This has a pitiful history of failures (there was a well-publicized one in September 1988), and is arguably unScriptural ("you don't know the day or the hour"). (Actually I think the whole enterprise is unscriptural, which is the point of this posting.) 2) A deadline. Based, for e.g., on the belief that Christ will return within 'one generation' (40 years? 51? Pick a number?) of the founding of the State of Israel (1948) (this is one interpretation of the 'fig tree' passage in Matt 24, and I think may have contributed to the 1988 debacle). Trouble is, as your deadline approaches, this inevitably turns into a prediction of Type 1. If I predict that Jesus wil return before, say, A.D. 2000, then on December 31, 1999, I will get up saying "Today!", which is a Type 1 prediction. 3) A rather vague: "Soon!". But this is a prediction that doesn't actually predict anything. What is soon? One year? 10? 100? 1000? As C.S.Lewis said, "All times are soon to Aslan". So, except for the hysteria it creates, this is indistinguishable from refusing to make any prediction at all (which is the position Matthew Huntbach, myself, et al have taken). As an aside, I'd like to float a (probably controversial) interpretation of the 'wars & rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes' verse in Matt 24 (my Bible is elsewhere, I don't know the vs #). This is taken by many to mean that an increase in such calamities is a harbinger of the Second Coming (and they also frequently go on to assert that such an increase is detected). I suggest that it means precisely the opposite: in many cultures, wars and natural disasters have always been seen at the time as the End of the World. Christ, IMO, is saying: "No, that's not the End. That's *normal*. It's called 'living in a fallen world'. The real End, when I bring it, will be much different...like a thief in the night...". In any case, I fail to see why some Christians consider it so vitally important to predict Christ's coming: He told us it would be obvious when it happened. In the mean time, I don't see how it in any way changes God's call for me to live a holy life, and demonstrate his love in word and deed. As far as I can see, that's the only 'ready' I need to be. Is it going to be a great sin that I wasn't sitting up on my roof-top waiting for the sky to open? I could meet the Lord at any moment: I might be raptured, or I might drop dead of heart failure, or the building I work in might collapse: what difference does it make when, or how, it happens? Let me say again: MY DUTY IS CLEAR! I recommend C.S.Lewis' essay "The World's Last Night" (anthologized in _Fern_Seed_&_Elephants, among other places) for some typically clear Lewisian thinking on the subject. Read it over the holidays, then we can kick it around some more next year... Under The Mercy, -- +===========================================================================+ | Steve Watson Disclaimer: Blame me, not the Company I keep... | | UseNet: watson@Software.Mitel.COM UUCP: mitel!spock!watson@uunet.uu.net | +===========================================================================+