The End Is Near! Long Live The End.

I’ve referred once or twice to a newsletter I receive from one of our most effective local social service agency’s Director. This time, I’m a little put out and think he missed the mark by a wide margin.

He begins this month’s epistle by stating that “… even the skeptic ‘end times’ forecasters begin to wonder if the biblical prophecies could be coming true in these days.” He then goes on to opine that: “… if I could just get Bible-believing folks even half as interested in the poor as they are about horror stories of a pre-millennial dispensation and their own heavenly future, we could change the world.” And he ends with: “So if this really is the end of time and you, as a follower of Jesus, have not lovingly fed the hungry, cared personally for the poor widows and orphans, or ‘remembered the poor,’ (Gal 2:10), you might want to get busy! The ‘red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns’ (Rev 12-3) may be outside your door tomorrow!”

A few thoughts:
1). Nobody knows when the end times are and we are instructed to be in all ways prepared, always. Likewise; we should ever consider the hungry, the poor, the widows and orphans, in fact ALL those marginalized by society.
3). However, using “end times” philosophy directed to a generally less theologically grounded readership seems to me as scare tactics designed accomplish one’s own agenda at the risk of sound Biblical knowledge and scholarship. The world is scary enough these days without some well respected leader preaching “God’s ‘gonna get you for that.”
4) And finally, while you might get a few extra donations from some guilty souls in reply to your message; you should consider the folks you “turn off”, who see through your agenda and take exception to the method. Unfortunately, this time I fall in that camp.