The Gospel in the Apocalypse

I cannot remember more distressing times than the ones we’re living in now. I know, I wasn’t around to see the awful carnage of the Civil War, and I didn’t see the misery of the Depression or the terrible loss of life in the world wars.

But in my own six decades I’ve never seen anything like what we’re seeing now: in the middle of a global pandemic and worldwide economic meltdown, our nation is once again embroiled in outrage and grief at gross racial injustice. It seems that everything is collapsing around us.

Lately I have found myself often thinking about the closing lines of TS Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Eliot wrote those haunting words in 1925, after the First World War. No one knew then that there would soon be another global conflict. In 1925 they called it the Great War, “the war to end all wars.” But even without the foreknowledge of another world war and the terrifying prospect of nuclear annihilation in the Cold War and our own fractured times, Eliot still foresaw a pitiful conclusion to our days.

“Not with a bang but a whimper.”

What does the Gospel have to offer in such fearful times as ours?

As I think about this, I find myself once again returning to the two questions that won’t go away, questions that will preoccupy this Christ-follower to the end of his days:

1. What does the Gospel mean in this situation?

2. What does the Gospel require of us in this situation?

What does the Gospel mean in the middle of a global pandemic and economic disaster accompanied by racial violence?

It means the same thing it did when the Gospel was first proclaimed in first century Palestine (another deeply troubled time and place):

The Gospel means that this is not all there is.

The grief-stricken followers of Jesus of Nazareth probably didn’t find solace in considering the sovereignty of God that Friday night, with Jesus’s broken body cooling in the grave. All they could see is the disastrous death of a vision and the continued triumph of corrupt Jewish leaders and brutal Roman authorities.

But from where we stand, we can see that God was indeed at work that night. In only a few days, He would light the fuse on an explosion that would lift the mighty Roman Empire off its hinges.

All of that was opaque to Jesus’s people that awful night, but God was at work nonetheless.

If we could only for an instant see and understand all that He is doing now, how He is working behind the scenes to build His Kingdom and to move all of heaven and earth toward that glorious Day of Restoration, we would not be in such despair. We would be filled with glad hope.

The Gospel means that even in desperate times God is quietly at work bringing about His own wise and good purposes.

What does the Gospel require of us in these distressing times?

At least two imperatives follow here:

1. We must not join the riot. Social media – the mouthpiece all of us have to speak to the entire world – invites and rewards provocative language. Nothing gets attention like loud accusations and crude language. But Christ-followers have a special obligation to speak carefully and thoughtfully.

Yes, we speak up to oppose oppression and violence against women and people of color, and, yes, we oppose violence against the unborn. But if we join the angry mob (on either side), we forfeit the right to speak Gospel truth to our neighbor. Paul urged the believers in Colosse to “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders…. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:5-6). Never have those words been more timely.

2. We must not be discouraged, and we must encourage one another. The Epistle to the Hebrews, written to a beleaguered group of Jewish Christians, exhorted its readers to persevere: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25, ESV).

How do we keep our heads about us in such troubling times? We keep our eyes on the Word of our promise-keeping God, we stay in touch with our brothers and sisters in Christ (some of whom may need encouragement from us even more than we need it from them), and we intentionally and repeatedly look to God as our only sure refuge in this storm.

Persevere.
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor

Subscribe to receive Discipleship Weekly in your inbox each week.