Doomsday Distraction
Rev. Gary Osborne
I was greatly disturbed last summer as I began reading the June issue of Charisma magazine, and saw that the lead article was written by Rev. Ted Haggard, who pastors one of the largest congregations in the United States. His article was entitled "Doomsday Distraction" and the premise of the article was that the Church spends too much time preaching and teaching about the rapture of the church! He seems to think that to teach about this subject necessarily means Christians will be too pre-occupied (if such a thing were even possible) with Christ's return to actually work for the advancement of the kingdom of God.
I was intrigued by his premise, because as I understood the Scriptures, the exact opposite was true. The more we believed Jesus could come at any moment the more we would be compelled to live holy lives, pray harder, and speak to people about Him, knowing the time was short (I Thes. 5:6; I Pet. 4:7,8; II Pet. 3:11, 12). But apparently Rev. Haggard has a different philosophy. And there are 3 things in his article that I would like to point out.
Firstly, Haggard contends that "regrettably, too many believers who should have been focused on strengthening local churches, praying…or attending school so they could become leaders…made choices that altered the course of their lives based on a misunderstanding of where they are on the timeline of human history."
Haggard goes on to give the typical example of believers going to the hills to live in isolation as they await Christ's soon return (think Y2K). Of course, what he fails to mention is that Paul addressed this very problem in his letter to the Thessalonians. The problem of misunderstanding, and mishandling our time here on this earth has always been around. There were some in Thessalonica who apparently thought that since Paul preached an imminent return of Christ, that it gave them a license to be lazy and not work anymore.
This overblown and misdirected view of holiness is nothing new. Yet Paul, when instructing the church there, didn't stop preaching about the imminent return of Christ. To the contrary, he corrected the false application of his teaching, but continued to teach the doctrine! One should never stop teaching a truth simply because certain hearers will distort or abuse that truth. Should we stop preaching about the grace of God because some will fall into antinomianism (a false teaching that claims Christians can sin all they want because they are forgiven)? God forbid! Therefore Haggard's issue here is washed out. We cannot stop teaching the imminent return of Christ simply because some abuse or misunderstand it.
Secondly, Haggard misinterprets Jesus' words in Matt. 24:14. Jesus says there that "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."
Ted Haggard concludes, as many others have as well, that this passage means Christ cannot come back until every living soul has heard the gospel. This is obviously not what Christ meant. If that were the case, then Paul and the other disciples were deluded to believe Jesus could come back in their lifetime (and they obviously did believe that).
There are a couple of problems with Haggard's interpretation of this passage. First off, if Haggard is right, then the return of Christ is squarely put in OUR power, instead of God's. This belief would say, "It's all in our hands. The quicker we get the message out, the quicker He can return." But that isn't what Christ taught. He said the day and hour of His return rested totally in the wisdom and timing of the Father. Not in man's ability to carry out the great commission (as important as that is).
The other problem with the reverend's interpretation here is that it really does destroy the doctrine of imminency. If one believes Christ cannot return until all have heard, then one need not really be watching and waiting for Jesus at all times. Yet Christ and His apostles made it clear that this is exactly the posture we must have - that He can come back at any moment.
This issue of imminency is critical to our understanding of the passages Haggard gives as proof of his position that we are too consumed with the rapture. Dr. Renald Showers defines and describes imminence as follows:
1) An imminent event is one which is always 'hanging overhead, is constantly ready to befall or overtake one; close at hand in its incidence.' ('imminent,' The Oxford English Dictionary, 1901, V, 66.) Thus, imminence carries the sense that it could happen at any moment. Other things may happen before the imminent event, but nothing else must take place before it happens. If something else must take place before an event can happen, then that event is not imminent. In other words, the necessity of something else taking place first destroys the concept of imminency.
2) Since a person never knows exactly when an imminent event will take place, then he cannot count on a certain amount of time transpiring before the imminent event happens. In light of this, he should always be prepared for it to happen at any moment.
3) A person cannot legitimately set or imply a date for its happening. As soon as a person sets a date for an imminent event he destroys the concept of imminency, because he thereby is saying that a certain amount of time must transpire before that event can happen. A specific date for an event is contrary to the concept that the event could happen at any moment.
4) A person cannot legitimately
say that an imminent event will happen soon. The term 'soon' implies that an
event must take place 'within a short time (after a particular point of time
specified or implied).' By contrast, an imminent event may take place within a
short time, but it does not have to do so in order to be imminent. As I hope
you can see by now, 'imminent' is not equal to 'soon'. [i]
A.T. Pierson has noted that "Imminence is the combination of two conditions, viz.; certainty and uncertainty. By an imminent event we mean one which is certain to occur at some time, uncertain at what time." [ii] Thus we see that the fact that Christ could return (but may not soon) at any moment, yet without the necessity of signs preceding His return, requires the kind of imminence taught by the pre-trib position and is a strong support for pretribulationalism.
But what New Testament passages teach this truth? Those verses stating that Christ could return at any moment, without warning and those instructing believers to wait and look for the Lord's coming teach the doctrine of imminence.
Note the following New Testament passages:
1
Corinthians 1:7-"awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,"
1
Corinthians 16:22-"Maranatha."
Philippians
3:20-"For our
citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the
Lord Jesus Christ;"
Philippians
4:5-"The
Lord is near."
1
Thessalonians 1:10-"to wait for His Son from heaven,"
1
Thessalonians 4:15-18-"For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are
alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who
have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of {the} archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in
Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up
together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall
always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words."
1 Thessalonians 5:6-"so then let us not
sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober."
1 Timothy
6:14-"that
you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our
Lord Jesus Christ,"
Titus 2:13-"looking for the
blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ
Jesus;"
Hebrews
9:28-"so
Christ . . . shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin,
to those who eagerly await Him."
James 5:7-9-"Be patient,
therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord . . . for the coming of the
Lord is at hand . . . behold, the Judge is standing right at the door."
1 Peter
1:13 -"fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at
the revelation of Jesus Christ."
Jude 21-"waiting anxiously for
the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life."
Revelation
3:11; 22:7, 12, 20-"'I am coming quickly!'"
Revelation
22:17, 20-"And the Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And let the one who
hears say, 'Come.'" "He who testifies to these things says, 'Yes, I
am coming quickly.' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."
It is significant that all of the above passages relate to the rapture and speak of the Lord's coming as something that could occur at any moment, or in other words, that it is imminent. This is why believers are waiting for a person - Jesus Christ - not an event or series of events such as those related to what Haggard misinterprets Jesus as meaning in Matthew 24.
Thirdly, Haggard deliberately downplays the nation of Israel's role as a vital piece of the prophetic timetable God has given us in Scripture concerning the nearness of His return. In the article he posits the following: "Could it be that with our fixation on Israel, we've' neglected the Scriptures that indicate the Second Coming is predicated on our spreading the gospel throughout the world?"
We've already addressed the fact that Christ's return cannot be dependent on us, but instead is in God's timing - completely and without exception! But here Haggard seems to belittle the importance of Israel and current political and world events in light of a biblical understanding of the rapture.
I have to answer, "NO!" to Rev. Haggard's question. We can never underestimate the place of Israel in God's timing. The rebirth of Israel as a nation in 1948 is very important, in contradistinction of Haggard's claims, because at no other time, since the Roman Empire existed in all it's glory, have we been even close to the potential for the one world government that God says must be formed for Anti-Christ to rule over.
John
saw, in the book of Revelation, a great one world power and religion controlled
by the Beast that would wage war on the nation of Israel (Rev. 12). Never before in world history have we had
the technology like we have today to set up this "man of sin" in the
position of total dominance he must have to rule for 7 years during the
tribulation.
And I fear that Haggard's language veils a possibly deeper, albeit subtle, growing anti-Semitism that we see in the church world today. Too many are turning their backs on the nation that God has vowed to rescue and rule over one day in the future. All the way back in Genesis 12 the Lord promised Abraham that "I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. "
That promise has never changed, and Haggard and all others in the church world should be very careful in how they address the issue of the nation of Israel. God will come back for Her one day very soon, and He has told us that we must pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Let us not be negligent in that sacred duty.