The Good News of the Apocalypse
Where do we start?
The murder on live TV of two human beings whose lives mattered? Casual luncheon discussion about the cutting up and sale of the body parts of babies whose lives mattered not because of their achievements but because of their intrinsic worth? The slaughter of people in a Charleston church prayer meeting whose lives mattered?
Then there's another scale to weigh the present agony: Iran getting a nuclear bomb; the unspeakable atrocities of people believing they are acting under divine authority; a secularist rage to push free religious expression to the very edge of culture, and then eliminate it altogether; mayhem in the streets; hate-driven strife; the collapse of marriage, and with it the family, the fundamental institution for civilizing a society; and apostasy in many churches.
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Oh, and did I mention the Supreme Court of the United States mimicking Lucifer's primordial sin of trying to push God aside and off His throne when the judges' presumed to "reimagine" marriage away from the biblical model?
Apocalyptic, all of it.
"Apocalupsis" is New Testament Greek for "unveiling." The Apocalypse is the Book of Revelation. There Jesus Christ lifts the curtain on human history, and shows the Apostle John the meaning of the past, the implications of the present, and the panoply of the future. John writes it down and says it's good for us to read it all.
So what's behind that curtain? People everywhere are asking that question these days. Others want to avoid it because the thought of "apocalypse" is terrifying to them. However, there is also some very good news behind the curtain of history.
According to the Bible and the historical record itself, all this apocalyptic tragedy is pointing to the coming of revival and harvest. Charles Finney, the early nineteenth century American revivalist, wrote that revival "presupposes declension."
"Before every revival in history, deteriorating conditions have been evident in secular society and among God's people," report Professors Malcolm McDow and Alvin L. Reid in their book, Firefall, a sweeping study of revivals globally throughout history.
In general society prior to revival, McDow and Reid found that human-centeredness displaces God-centeredness. Leadership lacks quality and itself becomes desperate for direction. Men and women rationalize that even if there is a God they do not need His forgiveness or redemption. People follow the imaginations of their own hearts, counter to the Mind of Christ.
A majority of those who believe in God primarily think that God is there to serve them rather than the other way around. Many feel that God, the Bible, Church, are no longer relevant for the contemporary technology-driven age. Each human decides how he or she should approach spirituality, based on subjective experience and self-created opinion. There is a total rejection of God's transcendent authority and the sense of accountability that goes with it. People are alienated from God, and there is a huge spiritual hole at the center of their lives that they try to fill up with whatever they can.
There is also "declension" in the church leading up to the outbreak of revival, found McDow and Reid. Spiritual deadness characterizes many churches. Lethargy permeates those congregations — they are neither hot nor cold (the Laodicean condition), and there is even skepticism about God, biblical inspiration and authority, the sinfulness of the human, and the nature of salvation. Many churches in the age leading up to revival are human-focused and consumerist. Worship is focused more on how God meets the needs of humans rather than the transcendent awesomeness of God.
Through compromise with the world's values, churches become impotent and irrelevant in the attempt to appear "with it." Church doctrines drift with society's tides. Ritual and form become substitutes for true spiritual vitality. Evangelism declines.
As bad as all this is, it is actually the precursor to revival.
"The wave of spiritual progress recedes, but even in receding it is gathering in power and volume to return, and to rush further" in its progress toward God, wrote James Burns.
The nature of this revival and harvest is like what residents along Alabama's Mobile Bay call "Jubilee." This is the name given a rare phenomenon when all the aquatic life in the Bay suddenly stampedes for shore. Someone spots the rush of fish and shouts, "Jubilee!" The message goes up and down the Eastern Shore. People drop everything, and grab the nearest bucket, box, sack that might hold the catch.
Seasoned Jubileers know the characteristics: the rush of the aquatic harvest will be sudden; everything out there will come in — the good, the bad, the ugly; only those prepared to receive the harvest will get it.
Call it the "end-times revival," the "great jubilee harvest," or whatever, but these are the same elements to which the Church needs to pay attention in getting ready for the harvest. She must recognize that all through the Bible and history, revival and awakening have suddenly broken out in the least expected places.
The church must get herself mentally prepared to receive all that's out there in the culture who might flood her doors — the down-and-out, the smug upper crust, tattooed kids with strangely colored hair, old grumps, LBGT sinners, heterosexual sinners, ex-cons, future cons, addicts, abusers, ignoramuses, academics whose ivory towers are crumbling, barkeeps, abortionists, gang members, recovering atheists, agnostics who finally made up their mind, religionists weary of trying to placate a perpetually disgruntled deity, and everything else.
And finally, to get ready for the revival harvest, churches must prepare now the receptacles for the harvest — the ministries that will be filled with needy, spiritually hungry people.
Stand on the shore and get ready. Crisis and testing are ahead, but so are revival and harvest.
