Pastor Trey's 100% Accurate and Reliable End Times Prediction (Matthew 25:1-13)

In our weekly Bible Study, we’ve started going through a series that I wrote about Revelation. I entitled the series, “Sure Looks Like the End Times,” and wrote it in the summer and fall of 2020. The flippant titled comes out of how some of the conversations around the pandemic showed a deep lack of spiritual understanding. I heard a lot of, “Surely, this is a sign of the end,” as if the way to be ready of the end of days is to watch for it like a Houstonian in Hurricane Season.

Also, while a global pandemic constitutes a horrific tragedy, humans have suffered in this way before. Americans just hadn’t suffered that way in a long while. The Black Death in the Middle Ages elicited similar Christian responses, and that pandemic could wipe out the majority of populations that it hit, in an era where humans had no concept of how these things happened. It killed between 75,000,000 and 200,000,000 people, or as much of as 60% of the European population. I can understand why they might have thought, “Sure looks like the end times.” In our own era, HIV/AIDS has claimed 40,000,000 people globally in only around 40 years. Folks in the US have been saved from the brunt of that particular pandemic, but in parts of Africa, there are whole generations simply missing. COVID 19 hurt us all, badly, but it wasn’t the worst that it’s ever been or even the worst that it’s been lately.

Yet, the apocalyptic talk around COVID falls in line with how Christ’s return gets talked about generally. I can’t tell you how many times, in ten years as a pastor, that I’ve been pulled into a discussion of the news of the day with, “Sure looks like the end times, don’t it?” Pastors predicting the end of days (because clearly the current level of suffering and licentiousness in the world is the worst it’s ever been) is an entire cottage industry that’s been going on for centuries. If want to grow a following and make good money doing it, you can simply declare the you know the end. It helps if you have a specific date. Does modern society contain corruption (moral, sexual, and otherwise)? Yes. However, one should research the Greco-Roman sexual morays that upset Paul so badly if you want to feel better about our own times. We suffer from a never ending historical recency bias. I got roped into reading a 15 year old book about “Biblical codes.” It made a huge deal about how they could randomly rearrange things in just the right way and make Saddam Hussein name show up. I haven’t thought about that guy in years. He had a moment for two decades, but his significance faded. He was a blip – not a being of cosmic significance. It starts to feel like we want to prepare for the end by rooting for it and desiring to sit at the apex of history – for the Godly to be rewarded and for the sinners to burn.

Certainly, the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids recommends alertness. “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Matthew 25:13 NRSV) The foolishness of the foolish bridesmaids stems from not having everything in total order. They seem to expect that they will have time, at the crucial moment, to get their ducks in a row. Instead, only those who did their prep work get into the banquet. We see this time and time again in the overall Biblical picture of the end times. They will come, but they will come unexpectantly. You won’t have time when the moment arrives to get things in order. So, one must live expectantly and always prepared.

I just can’t believe that this alertness means, watching and hoping to see signs of the end. All the bridesmaids keep the same watch. They all sleep. They all hear the same announcement. The recommendation for preparation seems unrelated to a sense of watching. To me, this takes on the character of the two ways that students deal with a pop quiz. One way is to get deep into the logic and mindset of the teacher, to calculate the normal periodicity of pop quizzes, and to measure how long it has been since the last one. Through that alchemical process, you discern how likely a pop quiz will arise on any given day and do your work accordingly. Alternatively, you could just do the work consistently and always be ready. One set of bridesmaids failed to discern the pop quiz. The other set just did the work.

Do we think that if we watch diligently for the first hints of the end times, we can cram in what we need to do? Alternatively, does rooting for the end to come align with the picture that Christ and the New Testament paint of Christian living? Clearly, I don’t think so. The parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids speaks to the fact that we should always be living as if the end is at hand, and to me, I see in that instruction a call to discipleship not apocalyptic meteorology. Christians shouldn’t be cramming in their loving, study, and praying, when it becomes clear that the great pop quiz at the end time has arrived. We should be like the wise bridesmaids and consistently living our lives in a way as worthy of Christ as possible.

Essentially, when the end comes, we shouldn’t have to alter our behavior in any way. We prepared by digging deep into how God wants us to live. We did our homework. The most prepared students don’t fear the pop quiz or the exam. It shouldn’t matter if the end comes next Tuesday or thousands of years into the future. Our way of life, in light of God’s love, God’s grace, God’s call, and God’s return, should be the same. My 100% accurate end times prediction is that I don’t care in the slightest when it might be.