Will 2008 Be the End?

Yesterday the news media spent a lot of time looking back on 2007. Aside from the fact that it is a cheap way to fill broadcast time and earn advertising dollars, these year-in-revue shows do little to educate anybody. A person would have to have lived on Mars to not already know what happened in 2007. Even worse is the fact that an inordinate amount of time is wasted on "celebrities." Can we move on already! I have had enough of who-is-doing-what-with-who at this-or-that club/resort/jail/rehab center!

Another big non-story is the annual forecast about anything and everything by supposed experts. Most of their predictions are either so obvious, or so fuzzy, or so silly that they would be better to have been left in the circular file.

Religious people are not immune from such silly predictions. It is the twentieth anniversary of "88 Reasons Why Jesus Christ Will Return in 1988." Twenty years! In spite of the notorious failure of this pamphlet to prove to be accurate, the fad of prediction keeps popping up in various ways. Few people will step out on such a limb and predict that 2008 is the year Jesus Christ will return. But there are droves of people predicting that it will be soon. Often events in the EEC or the Mideast "prove" their scenarios. They rush their latest book to the publishers with their secret inside info about why they are certain that this is the year, season, decade, century, or era! Of course, if you make a prediction broad enough someone will prove to be right. But then any believer who confesses the Apostles Creed already knows that Christ will return at the end of the age!

I do not spend much time looking back. Of course I do look back in order to confess my sins to God. But dwelling on the past is a sure way to fail to step into the future. I come from pioneer stock. My family were the kind of people moving west. I guess I have that flowing in my blood. Looking and moving ahead from where I am to where I hope to be is a process of taking the first step and following it with a second one and so on. The future is unknown and therefore limitless. No small step forward is really wasted effort. We go forward, or learn something, or experience something, or meet someone that prepares us for the future.

You might wonder why I asked a question in the heading above—Will 2008 Be the End? It is pretty nebulous. The end of what? I do not expect war, famine, hatred, crime, tyranny, or greed to stop in 2008. We are all much too selfish and sinful for that to be likely! I do not expect the present age of human history to end in 2008. However, no one knows when Christ will return so it isn't impossible. I do not even know if my life will end in 2008. None of us really knows the time of our death. If we are honest with ourselves we have very little control about any of the big issues in life, so we cannot predict the end. Even our New Year's resolutions are pretty iffy. If you made any last year did you really succeed in keeping them?

So what could this question be about? Perhaps I could ask another question. Will 2008 Be the Beginning? The end or the beginning of hope? Some of you reading this have lost hope. You have decided to give up. Life is dreary and meaningless, you think, what's the use? So obsession, addiction, empty activities become your means of deadening the pain. Is there any hope left for me, you wonder?

I have hope. I don't say it to make you feel bad or envious. I want you to find the same hope. I really do! I have hope because God has given me a gift. I don't deserve it any more than you which is to say I don't deserve it at all. I didn't do anything to earn it. It is a free gift! God has given me forgiveness of my sins, life beginning now and continuing forever, and salvation at the end of time! God offers this same gift to you! As 2008 begins will you receive the free gift of God? He offers it to you because Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose from the dead! Your hope is that God promises you that he will raise you from the dead also to live forever in his Kingdom! Life lived in this world with the hope that comes from God's gift of salvation through Jesus Christ is new and fresh every day! May 2008 be the end of your despair and the beginning of hope in Christ!