JESUS COULD COME BEFORE TOMORROW’S ECLIPSE

Tomorrow is the big eclipse. Many are taking it as a harbinger of the Return of Christ. They have elaborate teaching to prove it. I do not like to be a wet blanket to expectations of Christ's Coming. I just think it best that expectations be grounded in what Scripture actually says and not some elaborate extra-biblical patched-together theory. I taught on this Wednesday night in depth as it relates to the coming eclipse. I am not going to repeat that here, but just think of two realities about tomorrow’s eclipse: 1) It is a NATURAL phenomenon. Any possible eschatological references to an eclipse in Scripture, as in the Cosmological Cataclysms declared by Isaiah, Joel, Jesus, Peter, and John, are apocalyptic SUPERNATURAL phenomena. 2) The eclipse on Monday will not be seen in Israel or any of the Middle East. How does an eclipse in this hemisphere, in America, relate to end-time events tied to prophesies for Israel? The reality of what happens when we get jaded by false expectations and dashed hopes based on extra-Scriptural “theories as noted in this blog I wrote eight years ago should serve as a warning of taking the memes, podcasts, teachings, etc., that sensationalize terrestrial and/or celestial events and occurrences such as eclipses over the word of Jesus and of Scripture. That Jesus has said He could come at any time should be enough to believe Jesus could come even BEFORE the eclipse tomorrow. Something I said some years ago resurfaced out of nowhere today and kept pummeling me over and over again. At that time years ago, I had felt compelled to preach on the Second Coming of Jesus. Part of my burden for that message came from sensing within the church and within me a waning expectation for Christ’s return. My statement was, “It should be alarming to us that the closer we get to the coming of the Lord the less expectation we have for it.” I could not escape making a confirming observation even as I preached that message. In the late seventies and early eighties, as a raw and lacking beginner, I would preach on the Coming of the Lord, and there would frequently be a response of shouting or praise or a general movement towards the altar by those gripped with the need to get things right. Decades later, as I preached, there seemed only obligatory interest and barely any discernable movement. I do not fault the people. The decline was in my heart as well. The diminishing expectation for Jesus’ return had diffused across the whole of American Christianity. This observation does not deny that there were enclaves and exceptions of individuals and groups that were burning with anticipation for His coming. But as a whole…well, just take Christian music for example: If you are old enough, have you ever stopped to compare the number of songs written and popular in the 70’s and 80’s that focused on Jesus’ coming compared to how few that do so today? These July evenings remind me of the days of my youth when a highlight of an evening was to get together with friends for an ice-cold watermelon in a host’s backyard. As the light faded and the katydids grew noisy and we munched on the sweet meat of the melon, the conversation would soon turn to the coming of the Lord. We would discuss for hours about Christ’s coming, the Tribulation, the Antichrist, the Bride. Then, the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 struck. People were concerned. Would the whole keg of the Middle East explode? I remember in the public school I attended, classmates gathered in a group, and we talked about the coming end of the world and Jesus’ return. Oh, people did get carried away. The date-setters preached their heresy. The chart-makers had it all figured out; except they didn’t. The nut cases gathered followers and led them off to a communal. The faithful were built to a crescendo of expectancy by worsening world events and announcements by preachers and teachers that Jesus was about to come. Only He didn’t. And things became even worse. And worse. Believers became desensitized to any suggestion that the growing darkness and danger of our world were harbingers of Christ’s return. Too many times they had thought they were on the cusp of the Coming. Then, believers grew to expect the growing evil and to not expect Christ’s coming. Somehow when the expectancy that they were leaving this world to join Jesus in His return diminished, there was a growing acclimation to and adoption of this world in the church. That in itself further deadened any expectancy for Jesus’ Coming. However things have played out, Jesus is still coming again, and we are closer now than we’ve ever been. As the old song says, “Come, Oh, Holy Spirit, all our hopes renew.” The closer the Coming gets, may our expectancy grow stronger, not weaker. --Pastor Clifford Hurst