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BEHOLD, HE COMES! #4
I MAY BE WRONG
Is it possible to be bold and humble about a Bible doctrine at the same
time? I think it is . . . and today I want to explain why, when it comes
to the pillar of faith known as the Second Coming, that’s precisely where
I find myself.
Back in 1992, a radio preacher named Harold Camping wrote a book with
this simple title: 1994. He predicted, based on his calculations, that
the Second Coming of our Lord would be in September of 1994. Just before
the big event, he wrote a second volume entitled Are You Ready? Back in
1988, a NASA rocket engineer named Edgar Whisenant began selling a book
with this prophetic title: 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in ‘88.
Six million copies were sold or given away, warning readers that the end
would come on September 11, 12, or 13 of that year. When it didn’t happen,
Mr. Whisenant found his math error, published a sequel moving everything
back to 1989, and sold some more books. As far as I understand, he has
since gone out of the publishing work.
More recently an Internet story tells about a writer named Gary Blevins
who deciphered a Bible code where “A” is assigned the number 6, “B” is
12, “C” is 18, and so on, adding six every time, right down to “Z” being
26 x 6 or 156. And according to this formula, the name “Kissinger” adds
up to 666! So does Jesse Ventura, if you render him as just “J. Ventura.”
Back in 1990, when this all came out, the writer was quite sure that Ronald
Reagan, recently retired ex-President, was very likely the Antichrist,
even though “Ronald Reagan” only added up to 660 points. But if you put
it “A Ronald Reagan” – for no particularly good reason – then it was 666.
Plus, numerologists noticed that Ronald Wilson Reagan was three names,
six letters in each name – 6 - 6 - 6 – and a total of six syllables. All
very interesting.
If you turned the code around and assigned the numbers backwards, going
from Z to A, then Jerry Falwell’s name added up to 666. So did Billy Graham,
if you just called him “W. Graham.” The most likely candidate of all was
former President Bill Clinton. Adding the one-through-26 values for his
initials– “W.J.C.” for William Jefferson Clinton – and you get 36. If
you add up all the numbers from 1 to 36, you get . . . that’s right: 666.
And here’s more proof: Clinton was our 42nd President. Write down all
the numbers from 1 to 42, and then cross out the primes. The ones that
remain also add up to 666.
Well, friend, let me say as gently and warmly as I can: God forgive us.
And you can understand why this radio ministry, the Voice of Prophecy,
bows in thankfulness to heaven for God’s pardoning of our human frailties.
Because my own denomination, the Adventist Church, was birthed out of
this very kind of well-intentioned numerology. Back in the early 1800s,
a Baptist lay minister named William Miller, working from the prophecies
of Daniel chapter 8, calculated that the return of Jesus would be in the
year 1843. Thousands bought into his teachings, but when nothing happened
that year, his followers accepted the fallback date of October 22, 1844.
Many history books today list that event as the “Great Disappointment.”
And those who continued to trust in the Lord, continued to study their
Bibles, and continued to believe that some way, some DAY, Jesus Christ
was going to literally and visibly come in the clouds of heaven . . .
that group slowly coalesced into what today is known as the Seventh-day
Adventist Church.
So friend, my forebears know full well what it means to make a mistake.
What it means to interpret something incorrectly. The tragedy of 1844
was painfully repeated just 11 years ago when a Lee Jang Rim, who headed
200 Protestant churches in Seoul, Korea, determined that the secret rapture
would occur on October 28 of that year. Twenty thousand believers accepted
that message; many of them walked away from their jobs or left cynical
families. Tragically, many of the women, thinking they were soon going
to heaven, underwent abortions. Two months after the non-event, this Pastor
Rim was put in jail because he’d taken $4.4 million from the group and
purchased bonds that didn’t mature until 1993!
What should we do as Christians living here in the year 2003? I’m sorry
to recall that a number of prominent Bible students in my faith community,
after all the failures of the past, were quite vocal in suggesting that
the millennial year 2000 “might be it.” “Might have significance.” But
leaving the issue of dates to the side for now, it’s equally true that
Christians are not at all in consensus about the details regarding the
Second Coming. What will happen just before Christ returns? Will the Church
still be here? Is His coming visible or invisible? Is the rapture a reliable
doctrine?
Let me say it again as clearly as I can – and I think my fellow Adventists
and I should be the most prominent in putting it this way: Friend, we
need to be both bold and humble.
There was a wonderful essay on the Internet, quoting from a Christian
source we respect very much indeed: the evangelical writer and teacher,
John Stott. He gave this statement at the Trinity Episcopal School for
Ministry, and had a bit of fun with the fact that it aired on the BBC.
So he began with this:
“BBC stands on this occasion neither for the British Broadcasting Corporation,
nor for Beautiful British Columbia, nor for the British Born Chinese,
the Brethren Boat Club – which I came across in New Zealand – or the Bombay
Borough Council, but for ‘BALANCED, BIBLICAL CHRISTIANITY.’” Then he gave
this powerful testimony: “Fundamental to New Testament Christianity is
the perception that we are living between the first and the second comings
of Christ, between what has been done when He first came and what remains
to be done when He comes back, between present reality and future destiny,
between Kingdom come and Kingdom COMING, between the now already of the
inaugurated kingdom and the not yet of the Kingdom that will be consummated
when Christ comes back.”
He then shares a line that I think all of us who look for that glad
day should memorize. Here it is:
“It is just as mature,” he writes, “to say ‘I don’t know,’ as it is
to say ‘I know,’ provided we say it about the right things.”
Let me illustrate what I think Dr. Stott is saying. There is a last-days
time line that many wonderful Christians hold to, which runs something
like this. Sometime in the near future, an event called the secret rapture
will occur. Saints of God will be “snatched away,” “one taken and the
other left,” as suggested in Matthew 24, and taken up to heaven. Prior
to this time, the nation of Israel would have to have been restored to
her own land for a generation – again from Matthew 24. Then, for seven
years, the earth will experience tribulation, while the Church, God’s
redeemed, will be safely in heaven. The one “week,” or tribulation period,
by the way, comes from the 70th of the 70 weeks in the Daniel 8 and 9
prophecy, which many prophecy students “cut off” from the other 69 weeks,
and move down to the end of time.
Meanwhile, here on earth during those seven years, an unidentified Antichrist
power will be ruling the world, persecuting and killing new converts,
men and women who are still on earth but accepting Christ AFTER the rapture.
They will be won to the truth through the testimony of the “two witnesses
in Jerusalem” mentioned in Revelation 11:3, and by the 144,000 Jewish
evangelists described in chapter 7. At the end of the seven years, the
Holy City will descend to earth, Satan and his followers will be defeated
in the Battle of Armageddon, and then Christ will reign on earth for all
eternity along with the saved.
Now, friend, let me be as open with you as you deserve to have me be.
I don’t fully understand, and I don’t subscribe to, very much of that
time line. Seventh-day Adventist Christians – and I’ve already confessed
the failures of our past – don’t believe in a separate secret rapture
anytime prior to the Second Coming. As we continue to sort through Daniel
8 and 9, fully acknowledging the errors in our past history, we don’t
see the validity of taking that 70th week from its normal timeline in
the B.C. era, and putting it down at the end of time – the so-called “Gap
Theory.” And at the time of the Second Coming, we are not what theologians
call chiliastic in our eschatology; we expect, according to John chapter
14, verses 1-3, that when Jesus comes, those who have trusted in Him for
salvation will spend the 1000 years of the millennium in heaven, not on
earth, and that the final judgment of the wicked happens after the thousand
years. All of this, and much more, of course, you can find proposed in
our Discover Bible Course.
But do you know what, friend? Both these scenarios, and others that are
out there, end up the same. God’s people are with God. The earth is made
new. Sin is gone. Satan is gone. Praise and worship are the order of the
day instead of funerals and cemeteries. I can boldly say along with all
my fellow Christians: “Jesus is coming again.” I can HUMBLY say: “Here’s
how it MIGHT play out.”
We should ALWAYS say: “Maranatha. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
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