Introduction

· When’s the last time you thought seriously about the end of the world—Jesus coming back and all that stuff. The Bible says the end is coming—that Jesus is coming back—really. So what should we do about it?

1. Extremes to avoid . . .

a) Obsessing over when he’s coming back.

Times & Dates—Date Setters

· William Miller seemed an unlikely striker of panic. He tended a farm in Vermont, fought in the War of 1812, and served as a justice of the peace. His religious life, however, had not been so steady. Early in life, Miller followed Deism, the rationalistic faith of many American intellectuals (and several founding fathers). He converted to Christianity in 1816, then began assiduous study of the Scriptures. He found the prophecies of Daniel especially compelling and used a few key numbers from the text to calculate the date for Christ's return. The formula went something like this:

o 1. Daniel 8:14 says that after 2,300 days, the sanctuary will be cleansed.

o 2. Day actually means year, and the cleansing of the sanctuary means the eradication of evil on earth—in other words, the End.

o 3. According to James Ussher, an influential Anglican bishop with a passion for dating biblical events, Daniel recorded that prophecy in 457 B.C.

o 4. Add 2,300 years to 457 B.C., and you get 1843.

Miller arrived at this conclusion not long after his conversion, but he didn't tell anyone about it until 1831. Soon invitations to speak began to pour in, and Miller became a local phenomenon. He gained wider audience in 1838 by publishing Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, About the Year 1843 and partnering with pastor Joshua V. Himes, who would serve as his publicist. An estimated 50,000 people took the message to heart and prepared to meet their maker, while hundreds of thousands more at least casually turned an eye to the skies. As the title of Miller's book indicates, he had not pinpointed a date for the apocalypse. Pressed for more specificity, he could only offer the span March 21, 1843 to March 21, 1844—the beginning and end of the Hebrew year. Unfortunately, March 1844 saw no lions lying down with lambs. Miller announced that he must have erred, but one of his followers dipped back into the Scriptures to adjust the calculations. After the "tarrying time" cited in Habakkuk 2:3 and Leviticus 25:9 was factored in, October 22, 1844, got the nod. Once again, nothing happened.

· Edgar Whisenant. His book, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1988, came out only a few months before the event was to take place— September 11-13. When Jesus didn’t come as predicted. EW came out with a new book called 89 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1989. Gimme a break!

· A long line of folks who’ve been setting dates. Obsessing over potential dates for Christ’s return is an exercise in futility.

· Frankly people who indulge in such activities give Christianity a bad name.

· If you have an insatiable desire to be wrong, set a date for the Second Coming of Christ.

b) Living like he's never coming back.

Peace & Safety—everything’s cool. No worries.
That’s like sleeping in the dark, all cozy in your bed—oblivious to any danger lurking nearby.
Or like being drunk—plastered—stumbling around in the dark unable to respond reasonably to any threat.

· Pompeii-Vesuvius

“One of the ironies of volcanoes is that they tend to produce very fertile soils, and that tends to lure people to live around them,” says Field Museum geologist Philip Janney.
Daybreak, August 25, A.D. 79. Under a lurid and sulfurous sky, a family of four struggles down an alley filled with pumice stones, desperately trying to escape the beleaguered city of Pompeii. Leading the way is a middle-aged man carrying gold jewelry, a sack of coins and the keys to his house. Racing to keep up are his two small daughters, the younger one with her hair in a braid. Close behind is their mother, scrambling frantically through the rubble with her skirts hiked up. She clutches an amber statuette of a curly-haired boy, perhaps Cupid, and the family silver, including a medallion of Fortune, goddess of luck. But neither amulets nor deities can protect them. Like thousands of others this morning, the four are overtaken and killed by an incandescent cloud of scorching gases and ash from Mount Vesuvius. In the instant before he dies, the man strains to lift himself from the ground with one elbow. With his free hand, he pulls a corner of his cloak over his face, as though the thin cloth will save him.
Southern Italy is unstable ground, Janney says. “The African plate, on which most of the Mediterranean Sea rests, is actually diving beneath the European plate.” That kind of underground collision produces molten rock, or magma, rich in volatile gases such as sulfur dioxide. Under pressure underground, the gases stay dissolved. But when the magma rises to the surface, the gases are released. “When those kinds of volcanoes erupt,” he says, “they tend to erupt explosively.” To this day, in fact, Vesuvius remains one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes; some 3.5 million Italians live in its shadow, and about 2 million tourists visit the ruins each year. Although monitoring devices are in place to warn of the volcano’s restiveness, “if there is a major eruption with little warning and the winds are blowing toward Naples,” says Janney, “you could have tremendous loss of life.”

· NYC—9/11/01. Do you remember where you were? Do you remember how you felt when you first saw those images on TV? NO! This can’t be happening!!

· Jesus uses the story of Noah to illustrate the point that living like he’s never coming back is a serious mistake. Mt 24:36-39 (NIV) “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

An exercise in stupidity · BKC—This period of history will come as a surprise to those on the earth at the time, like the visit of a thief to a sleeping homeowner (cf. Matt. 24:43-44; Luke 12:39-40).

· No more can the world escape the coming wrath of God, when it breaks out on the day of the Lord, than a pregnant woman can escape labor pains. A strong expression is used in the Greek (a double negative: ou mē) to stress that fleeing (ekphygōsin) will be futile.

2. The only appropriate response: Be Ready

Look. If you know that a thief is coming, but you don’t know when, you’re going to be ready!
Alarm system. Bars on the windows. Guns at the bedside. You’re going to be ready!
The healthy approach to Christ's return—to be ready.
How? Suit-Up with the right stuff

a) Put on faith and love as a breastplate

Roman soldier’s breastplate. Overlapping copper or bronze sheets or scales attached to a fabric backing. Most scales had raised ribbing and borders for strength.
Breastplate covered a soldier from his neck to his waist and protected most of his vital organs.
Motorcycle Jacket—armor. I see all these attractive young ladies on the backs of bikes—wearing t-shirts, shorts, and sandals. Bike gets dumped—bummer—all that pretty skin’s gonna get rubbed right off. Somewhat like sticking your nose up to an electric sander just to see what it would feel like. Gotta have that jacket—to protect the skin—and the bones (armor).
Faith is the means by which we enter a relationship with God. We’ve been made right with God through Christ by our faith (Rom. 5.2-5).
God has poured out his love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And that love acts as an expression of our faith (Gal. 5.6, 1 Thess. 1.3).
Faith and love protect that most vital of organs—our heart.
Lot’s of people around these days with heart trouble—no I’m not talking about clogged arteries in that organ that goes thump-thump— angina, arrhythmia and all that. I’m talked about folks whose innermost being (the true self) has been trashed by the garbage of this world. Hatred, anger, lust, greed . . . the list goes on and on—have been allowed to invade hearts and take up residence there. As a result the heart ceases to be as God intended—alive and unpolluted.
Only through faith and love can the heart be cleansed and re-animated. Only as we respond to faith in Christ and allow God’s love to flow in and through us can we experience life the way God intended—the inner person—the real me feeling clean and alive, uncorrupted by the filth we find out in the world.

b) Put on the hope of salvation as a helmet

Roman helmets were made of iron or copper alloy (both bronze and brass are known). The main features are the bowl, a neckguard (to protect from blows to the neck), cheekpieces (to protect the sides of the face), and a browguard (defending against downward blows to the face). Many helmets had fittings to allow for the attachment of crests. Soldiers often punched or scratched their names and those of their centurions onto their helmets as a mark of ownership.
Motorcycle Helmet—protects the old gray matter. Now, folks, my head is ultra-hard. Ferrell will attest to that. But even my rock-hard head can’t withstand the potential peril that follows the dumping of a bike—not even of the gentlest variety. Pavement contact with the head at 20 mph—brain trauma—fatal?
Helmet—hope of salvation. Not merely wishful thinking. Some folks really get confused here—they think that Christian hope is just pie-in-the-sky thinking—that it’s a roll-of-the-dice kind of hope. That’s NOT Christian hope. The hope we believers have is firm confidence in Christ. The assurance that he . . .well, let’s take a quick look back at something we recited earlier—middle section of the Apostles’ Creed. And in Jesus Christ . . . from thence he shall come (There it is!).
With that kind of hope, we’ll endure anything that crosses our path--the hardest pavement life can throw our way.

Conclusion

· God does not want us to suffer his wrath--but to avoid it we've gotta have the right armor.

· Have you suited up with the right armor? Never been a high-pressure kind of guy, but I must tell you than if you’re to survive the ultimate challenge in your life—Christ’s return and God’s wrath, you need to be ready with the right armor. Faith, hope, and love. If you’re uncertain, we need to talk . . .

Hymn: #354 I Surrender All