Apocalypse Now
The world we live in is experiencing the throes that mark the beginning of agonizing and extraordinary change. For us, in our very comfortable westernized culture, our human tendencies, and desires for comfort, are tools that condition us to ignore things that detract from the pursuit of our dreams and fantasies. Yet, in spite of ourselves and our personal pursuits, ignoring the horizon wont change the future that is presently unfolding before our eyes.
Since the introduction of dispensational theology in 1830, great strides have been taken to link current events with Bible prophecy. The books of Daniel, Revelation, and Matthew 24 are central to understanding "end times" according to this school of thought. The return of the nation of Israel to their homeland seems to add a certain credence to this belief that promotes the idea of a secret rapture that will take us away before the time of bitter testing during which the Anti-Christ enjoys his seven year satanic rule on the earth. In all fairness, it must be said that there are other valid Biblical points of view concerning the divisive topic of end times with each school of thought insisting its correctness.
This is not a treatise in support of any particular end times doctrine. Our intent here is not to focus on end times theology but on the present needs in our world where genuine and practical Christianity can make a large and significant contribution.
Regardless of which eschatological position a person takes, and without respect to a particular school of thought concerning the close of the Church Age, there is a heavy weight that bears upon us which insists that we look closely at the critical crisis events that are transpiring in the world in which we live and work toward the development of a genuinely Christian awareness and perspective that lends itself to positive and fruitful action on our part as modern day believers in the historical Gospel.
While our own personal pursuits, and possibly the hope of escape from earths greatest tragedy, create an emotional comfort zone that is seemingly impenetrable, the flop of Y2K and the receding waves of noisy prophecies predicting the end also bring with them a bolstering effect that increases our personal shields against the harsh, ugly, disturbing sights and sounds of a changing world. At the sake of being redundant, let me say again that ignoring the horizon wont change the future that is presently unfolding before our eyes. Like in the game we played as children, the future is calling "ready or not, here I come".
In consideration of the topic "Apocalypse Now", there are several crucial areas of interest that need to be explored as we aspire to develop and cultivate a genuinely Christian awareness and perspective.
The Crisis In Southern Africa
Across southern Africa, 17 million people in seven countries face food emergencies. This year, in southern Zambia, the main staple - the maize crop - failed because of drought. One of the hardest hit districts is Kalomo (population 167,000), where a number of aid agencies including World Vision, CARE, and the Cooperative League of the U.S.A. are working together to distribute maize in an effort to fend off absolute calamity. The quantities being distributed are barely enough to keep people alive. Some families sell their possessions and their few remaining animals. Most people regularly miss meals. Some go for days without food.
James Addis visited Zambia. His eyewitness report on the conditions in Zambia were published in the Winter 2002 edition of World Vision Today. In his report he says, "There I find farmers facing their lot with a mixture of faith, stoicism, despair, a certain kind of 'gallows humor', and, most extraordinary of all, a generosity toward strangers. For example, young farmer Grace Mizinga's fields did not yield a single cob of corn this year, but she still finds it important to offer me a piece of raw cassava to munch on during my visit to her family's shack. I note the reddish tinge to the hair covering the heads of her three children, a sign of poor nutrition, so I balk at the offer. 'It's our tradition that whatever we have is shared,' explains her husband, Coventy. 'We don't feel good if a visitor goes away with nothing.'"
Sudanese Christians
Brent Salsgiver, a student at West Virginia Wesleyan College, visited the Sudan. His article appears in the November issue of Christian Social Action. The following two paragraphs are excerpts from "Setting Captives Free".
"Since the mid 1980's, Sudan has been entangled in a bloody civil war over land, oil, and most predominantly, religion. The Islamic Fundamentalist Government has declared jihad, a religious cleansing, of the Christians and Animists in the south. It is General Omar el-Bashir, the military radical Islamic Sudanese leader whose rise to power in 1989 coincided with the marked increase of government sanctioned slave raids. These raids, performed by the armed and unpaid Sudanese militiamen, have little focus beyond genocide and destruction. They are to massacre villages; taking their pay in any manner they choose, including human spoils.
In the 1990's, the American Anti-Slavery Group teamed up with Christian Solidarity International in order to work on the ground in Sudan to end slavery. One of the means to accomplish this is to purchase slaves through Arab men known as redeemers. People working with these agencies risk their lives traveling to the northern parts of Sudan where they purchase Sudanese women and children for the equivalent of $33 American dollars. Once safely back in the south, these agencies meet with the slave victims to document their experiences while enslaved in Northern Sudan."
To say their stories are chilling is an understatement. No human being should be subjected to the immoral brutality experienced by the Sudanese.
The AIDS Rampage
A United Nations report released recently reports that for the first time since AIDS was pronounced epidemic that women account for about half of all infected adults and the disease has begun to destabilize countries as it leaves large swaths of people unable to work or care for their families. This year, 5 million more people have contracted the HIV virus that causes AIDS, and about 3 million have died from the disease. As the epidemic expands in Asia and Europe, its political and economic consequences may alter the balance of power in entire regions.
According to the U.N. report, global AIDS statistics are staggering. Seven of ten people living with the disease are in sub-Saharan Africa and 58 percent of infected Africans are female. Of the 38.6 million adults living with the disease, 19.2 million are women.
"We're far away from the gay white men's disease it used to be in the 80's," Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, an alliance of six U.N. agencies fighting HIV and AIDS, said after introducing the report. The report concludes that young women are especially hard hit because of their lack of awareness of safe sex practices or ability to demand them, social vulnerability to older men, and their greater physical susceptibility to the disease.
Bernhard Schwartlander, the HIV/AIDS director of the World Health Organization, said, "The feminization of AIDS has stunning consequences. Because women are usually in charge of their children's care and education, tend to ailing relatives and play a major role in agriculture in Africa, the effect of their absence is magnified in a way that many generations ahead have to deal with."
AIDS is changing the demographic landscape of Africa. Millions of people in their prime are unable to contribute to the economy where women often contract the disease from their husbands or boy friends and ultimately their children are orphaned. A whole chunk of the population is disappearing and a whole generation of millions of orphans, and what will likely be de-socialized youth, will grow up creating social instability as well.
According to the U.N. report, although Africa has the greatest concentration of infected people, the world's fastest growing epidemic is occurring in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. The increase, 250,000 new infections and 25,000 deaths last year, has mostly been caused by a sharp increase in the number of young people who inject heroin and other drugs. Uzbekistan, in particular, is showing explosive growth. In the first half of this year there were nearly as many new HIV infections as had been recorded in the whole of the previous decade.
The report cites that China and India are also facing serious, localized epidemics with more than one million Chinese infected with HIV, many through the donation and receipt of tainted blood. Four million Indians are also infected.
War, Famine, Pestilence, And Death
When we look at the crises presently engulfing the world, it doesn't take a great deal of insight or imagination to begin seeing what resembles the unfolding of the Biblical prophecies found in the Apostle John's "Revelation" or "Apocalypse", prophecies that foretell a time of dire desperation affecting the inhabitants of the entire world. War, famine, disease, and the death produced by them has been occurring throughout the history of mankind. However, the effect of these has never been of such magnitude as is now being felt by earths population in its entirety.
While dispensationalists argue that the events of Revelation chapter six are for that period of time allotted to the reign of the Anti-Christ, it is all to apparent that the residents of planet earth are experiencing something strikingly akin to the scenes of disaster portrayed on the pages of the Apocalypse written by John. It is also apparent that earths greatest crisis, especially where the AIDS epidemic and other modern diseases are concerned, is just beginning. In the light of these crises, the most inappropriate acquirable attitudes of Christians are those of apathy and denial.
It is definitely in our best interest to increase our awareness of the problems that are plaguing our fellow residents on planet earth. Closing our eyes to these needs reflects no less than a hardening of our hearts and a denial of our inborn responsibility to actively engage ourselves as agents of healing and redemption. It's far from enough to simply sit back and depend upon the benevolence of humanitarian agencies or the resources of governments struggling with their own financial dilemmas.
Short Sightedness vs. Longer View
It's important to look closely at the scenes depicted in our world today, scenes that are seemingly overwhelming. In doing so, even the most compassionate soul quickly encounters a crippling awareness of personal inability while gazing upon the starving and suffering millions. And rightly so. Sadly, far too many in our affluent western society have lost the ability to care and these scenes do little to motivate them to acts of compassion. If left to the dis-compassionate, the sores of the nations, including our own, will never receive any healing salve.
Of equal importance to looking closely at these depicted scenes is the need to develop a longer view. Shortsightedness sees the immediate need. Longsightedness builds avenues through which the spirit of compassion is enabled by real flesh and soul. While shortsightedness causes us to feel inadequate, longsightedness seeks and pursues means to become agents of healing and change.
I recall a directive and challenge given in a chapel service at the Bible college that I attended. The president of the college told us to "get our eyes off the waves and fix them on the tide". Crises are like the waves that pound the shore ahead of and during a storm. They do plenty of damage on their own. But behind every storm, after the waves have wrought their havoc, the continual working of the incoming and outgoing tide will eventually wear and wash away until an entire coastline has been rearranged. What once existed no longer remains except as a memory.
Preparing For A Rearranged Landscape
While monumental efforts are being made to orchestrate a global connectedness where the citizens of planet earth can live without fear of cataclysmic war, others are doing all they can to insure global instability. In the midst of great achievements in technology and medicine, a more than significant percentage of our fellow sojourners on earth suffer from the ravages of natural disaster and rampant unchecked disease. The political instability in South American countries and the hotbeds in the Middle East and North Korea create staggering uncertainties.
We seem to be living in an age of extreme contrast. We relish our luxuries and conveniences and have somehow managed to develop coping mechanisms that keep us from becoming overly alarmed by crashing waves and shifting tides. Of course we do make exceptions when tragedies such as 9-11 strike close to home. But even then it takes only a short time for our coping mechanisms to kick in and we soon move on in pursuit of our personal dreams while leaving those stricken with grief to fend for themselves. The truth of this has been proven over and again. A lot of Bibles were sold following 9-11 and there was a short lived renewed interest in church attendance. Following natural disasters people work together in communities but once the crisis is over people drift apart. When fear subsides people drift back into their complacency.
The changes on the horizon are unlike the crisis that drove us to our knees when the Twin Towers fell. They are unlike planes falling from the sky into Pennsylvanian fields or onto the Pentagon. These are changes that, if the Lord tarries, will take centuries to recover from. These are changes that are rearranging the human landscape of planet earth.
Apocalypse Now, Adjustments Now
I recall a conversation that I had with a fellow ministerial student over twenty years ago. We were discussing the subject of missions and missionaries. His position was that there was enough work to do here at home and that he didn't see the need of sending missionaries to foreign countries.
We do have our hands full here at home in these United States. Nothing should be said or done to sidestep this. However, there seems to be a relevant thermometer to measure our temperature of concern that's found when we examine and weigh the relationship between our interest in the broken and hurting who have little means to care for themselves and those who have all the means and methods of materialism and technology within their grasp. Pardon me for a little bit of Bible thumping but Jesus did make some specific designations in the Parable of The Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 with the summation that what we do for the least is done for the Lord and what is not done for the least is not done for the Lord.
The resultant tragedy of neglecting to focus our attention on those who have no real material means of rewarding us for our service to them is that our focus becomes so narrow that we only see ourselves and those within our immediate reach who are able to foster our personal sense of selfishness. There is a great temptation to reject that which costs us something of our own time and resources and to reach for that which promises to increase our wealth and social status. When the Church, and individual Christians, become self-serving in their philosophy of ministry and of life, it is the self which is being served and not the Lord.
What positive or negative impact will we have on this generation? What part will we play in the healing or poisoning of the nations? How will the lives that we live help mend or broaden the schism that exists between mankind and the truth of God? It's not enough to diagnose the ills of the world without also looking for the curatives. The curatives abound and we need not look far from ourselves to find them. |
