The End of the World (1)
Something that I think concerns all of us, by which I mean that we find it irresistibly fascinating, is the concept of ‘when and how’ this world will end: scientists talk of the time when the sun will become a supernova and engulf the earth, Christian theologians discuss the second coming of Jesus, and others have a tendency to panic whenever the subject is mentioned. So what should our perspective be?
First, let’s take a look at the concept of ‘codes’ in the Bible. The whole purpose of the Bible is that it is God’s word to his people, it is meant to show us how to live and reveal who God is so we might be able to worship him. Our first response should be that if a message is intended for us in the Bible it will be explicitly there and within the meaning of the text, because that’s how God works. This is something that forms a fundamental part of what we believe the Bible to be.
These codes seem to work in similar ways, they involve the study of numbers in various parts of the Bible or placing words onto a grid and then analysing the letters to see if a pattern emerges. Let’s face some facts here; first the numbers they are using are symbolic. Those of you who have read any commentaries that have gone into depth about this issue will be aware of this; for a general idea of what I’m talking about, have a look at the article I wrote on Crossring a little while ago about Revelation and symbolism in it (the ‘Apocalypses’ series). Not very long after I had written that I happened to be talking to a man about this subject of Bible codes; he was very worried by the second Bible code so I asked him what numbers they had used. He immediately listed a few numbers from books like Isaiah and Revelation. This rings alarms in my head so I asked if he knows that none or at least very few of these numbers should be interpreted literally. He looks curious, so I point out that if the numbers he has quoted are to be taken literally then the people they refer to would have been counting down, for example the number of days of persecution they have left, rather than getting on with their lives and serving God. That, and many of them have specific symbolic meaning. So the achievement of these scholars is roughly this; they have taken a load of symbolic numbers and added them, multiplied them and probably divided them by the square root to the power of seven of each other in order to come up with a number which is the product of a load of symbols. This is probably not going to explain very much: so they find 2006 written back to front on a diagonal in Genesis; question: two thousand and six what? Sheep? Goats? Shopping days until Christmas? Years until England win the Football World Cup? It could mean anything, some people have just decided that it must mean that because that’s what they want it to mean.
Alternatively they place the whole Bible on a grid and look for patterns. If you want to find something hard enough you will actively see it regardless of the fact that you have lost sight of the wood for the trees. So they use a grid, and do they use a grid that is an objective size or do they use one that will produce the patterns that mean they can surprise us all by telling us that they have found ‘two thousand and six’ written backwards and diagonally across Genesis? Do you trust them to handle the Bible as we would have it handled? We only spend time worrying about this because they are scientists and therefore must be cleverer than us; Thomas a Kempis says that we should pay equal attention to anyone who is genuinely exposing God’s word to glorify him, be they a man on the street or in the pulpit. He also warns that “Our curiosity often impedes our reading of the Scriptures, when we wish to understand and mull over what we ought simply to read and pass by.”
If some of your family are going to visit you tomorrow at 5pm you will base all of your preparations around that time, bearing in mind that they might come early or late by say half an hour, and you will not leave your house. If they say to you, we will visit in March but don’t give a time, you will be waiting expectantly to see when they come, but you won’t put your entire life on hold to stay in the house during March in case they arrive. This is roughly the problem with these codes. If we take a day when we think Jesus is coming back, what does that leave for the intervening time? Jesus teaching that he will come like a ‘thief in the night’ is for this reason; our house is to be in order at all times in readiness for the return of our King. In fact not just our own houses: if we knew when Jesus would return, what would our motivation be today, this very minute, for evangelism? You might think it would change nothing, but realistically the effect is “Oh, I’ve got until 2006 to tell him/her, that’s loads of time!” This is not how it’s supposed to be. Another reality check we need is that when we get to Bible Code 2, and three, four, five and six when someone does them, will we still take this seriously when we know the previous ones to have been false? I hope and pray not.
Here’s a challenge for you: write out the Bible in a word processor and tell the computer to count the number of characters. When you have the fantastically large result in front of you, realise two things: first that with this number of characters to process it would not be hard to find a way of processing it to say anything you want whatsoever by varying the size of the grid. Secondly, and more importantly consider the language problem posed by this. Should we use one of the many English translations? Should we use New Testament Greek and Old Testament Hebrew? Should we place quotes from Jesus in Aramaic whilst maintaining the Greek narrative? Which manuscripts should we use? With all of these variables if one code says one thing the others will say other different things on the same point. Whilst we are devoting ourselves to working out this conundrum, what do you think God is thinking and feeling?
Human beings suffer, and always have from two major flaws in the realms of knowledge: arrogance and pride. Jesus says in Matthew 24 that not even the angels or he himself know the day or hour when he will return. How arrogant we are to place ourselves above Jesus in our ‘knowledge’! What pride it is that leads us to presume that we know the will of the Father when even the Son does not, and hold onto that belief! Moreover to answer my question above; Jesus’ heart is broken by his bride to be, when we listen to these theories and are worried by them and fear the end of the world, it is effectively saying that we don’t want him to return. To do so is to miss the whole point of our faith, and to lose the plot, literally, of the Bible.
It is for this reason that I intend to spend no longer on these codes than is necessary to demonstrate the many problems that we should raise about their validity. God does not want us to spend time on this, he wants us to worship him, not to try and use his word to uncover things we are not meant to know about. The world will end one day, it is what we should all be eagerly anticipating, to try and find out when is a pointless exercise in humanity. If we get too far into studying the numbers and letters of the Bible we will forget to look for God in his own Word.
The upshot of this is that we do not know when the world will end; it could end tonight. If it did I, for one, would not be upset. So to the point of this series; I think it would be useful for us to take a journey with God through this whole area of theology (eschatology) and look at a number of points:
The eschatology of the Old Testament, how the end of the world is portrayed and why;
The message of Jesus;
The eschatology of the New Testament.
All of this will, I hope, deepen our understanding of what is going on now, during the final days, and give us a view of what will happen as the world comes to an end. But let’s not forget that we are not meant to know everything, nor will we understand everything. I shall make reference to my series on Apocalypses throughout this series so reading that would be useful; but bear this in mind, I know that a beast in Daniel refers to a kingdom rising; I don’t know which one or when. I know what the words mean but I don’t understand the meaning of the words. This is something that we will find many times during this series; we shouldn’t be afraid of not knowing the answer, it didn’t worry Jesus that he doesn’t know when it will come, so it shouldn’t worry us if we don’t know something. What we can try to do is to understand why, as Christians we have nothing to fear from the end of the world, and should look for it expectantly for it will mean that our deliverer saviour and Lord has returned to us!
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