In case you missed it, this past Saturday, May 21st at 6 pm the world was suppose to end. To be honest, I was actually pretty surprised how much chatter this man’s claim was getting. But I guess when you are a radio broadcaster and are on a ton of radio stations across the nation, you will get a lot of publicity when you make outrageous claims like this. Well, considering you are reading this blog posting, I guess the world didn’t end. If you didn’t hear much about it, you can read more about it here.
How does the possibility of the world ending apply to ministry? I’ll answer how with a question – how often are we teaching about Revelations & the end times? Are we teaching students about the afterlife? How we helping them discover how they can be assured of where they will be when this world does end?
As it says in Mark 13:32-33 – ““But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.” No matter how convincing people may be or what radio station they speak on,
NO ONE really knows when the end of times will come. HOWEVER, even though no one can know when the end times will be, that doesn’t mean we should teach our students about the end of times. To be honest, for a long time I choose not to speak about or go through Revelations. I felt like it was too hard to go over and frankly, I didn’t think students would be interested at all. So I choose not to speak on this matter. What a lame excuse that I wish I could take back and do over.
But more importantly, I felt not speaking on the end times caused me to miss an even bigger opportunity for me. When I didn’t speak about the end times I lost an opportunity to challenge the students to think about where they will be going when the end of their time will come. Whether it will be tomorrow, next week, or 30 years from now, everyone has an end. Everyone will die. As it says in Hebrews 9:27, “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment”, everyone will die and face a judgment. Where will they end up and why do they believe that to be the case?
So as you process all the end of times talk, TAKE A MINUTE and…
- think about what you are doing to talk about what the Bible says about the end of days
- process how you are helping students really think about their end of days and where they will be going when their time in this world is over.
Don’t be like me and look back on weeks like this and think I have missed opportunities in the past.]]>