End Times Worry or Christ-Centered Peace?

“Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to stand before the Son of Man.” Luke 21:36

This verse from the gospel of Luke parallels the gospel of Mark.  If read fully, we see that both conclude with a teaching Jesus was giving the people about the end times.  He clearly states that while there will be signs that give us a clue as to when the end is approaching, we will never know the day or the hour, no matter how curious or concerned we are.  In fact, Jesus says that neither the Son, nor the angels will know, but only the Father.

It's always been interesting to me that so many Christians spend a lot of time worrying about and focusing on the end times.  I say that because odds are, all of us will face our end time long before Jesus comes back to the earth in his second coming at the end of time.  For each of us, our end time could be today.  None of us have a guarantee that we will be here tomorrow, so our focus in life should be on the Lord so that we are prepared to meet him face to face every day, not on being overly worried about the possibility of some potential catastrophic event from the heavens occurring.  The truth is, if we make Jesus the most important person in our lives and focus on growing closer to him daily, we have nothing to fear, either in life or in death.  While life will never be easy, when it’s built around Jesus and maintained by the Church he gave us, we can be at peace when facing sickness, persecution, and even death.  When we practice our Catholic faith daily, participating in the Sacraments of the Church often, we will be strengthened by the gift of Sanctifying Grace which all the Sacraments convey.  Life here on earth, whether a few years or a hundred years, is short. However, eternal life, either with God in Heaven or separated from him in Hell, is never ending.

When I owned and operated Blessings Christian Gift Shop, customers came in all the time worried about the end times.  Many who were Catholic had concerns about things like the Three Days of Darkness prophecy.  Now, just so we are all on the same page, everyone needs to understand that the Three Days of Darkness is not a teaching of the Church.  It is a private revelation usually attributed to Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, but it also has ties to other saints and mystics.  It is not in the Bible or the writings of any of the saints.  That doesn’t mean it’s a false prophecy, but it does mean that it is not a doctrine or dogma of the Church, meaning we don’t have to believe it to be Catholic.  

The Church is neither for it nor against it and has actually never formally addressed the issue and has no definitive teaching on it.  In these types of situations, we must be prayerful and prudent, because as long as it’s not against a teaching of the Church, we are allowed to make our own decision about whether or not to believe in a private revelation.  However, we do need to make sure that we don’t get so tied up in these types of things that we are drawn away from the true teachings of our faith or from Jesus himself.

Protestant brothers and sisters who came in the store, and some Catholics as well, were often concerned about the “Rapture,” a time when Jesus will supposedly come and suddenly take the “true believers” out of the world but leave everyone else behind to suffer the final tribulation.  This is another topic that is very misunderstood among Christians.  Even though many people think that it’s in scripture and scripture is often referenced by those who believe in it, the Rapture is not biblical.  In addition, the scriptures normally used in reference to the Rapture, while they seem to make sense, are really taken totally out of context.  The Catholic Church, and even most Protestant Churches, reject this teaching.  It never even existed until the 1800s when a Protestant group in Scotland popularized the idea in order to help prove some of their false theology.  It doesn’t matter that there have been TV shows and movies made about it.  The Rapture is a made-up teaching and is not true.  

Instead of worrying about all these bad things that could happen, we should be doing what Jesus told us to do.  He said, “Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to stand before the Son of Man”.  That’s every day. That’s right now.  If we truly stay vigilant in living our faith as Jesus told us to, praying to him in all that we do, thus building a strong relationship with him, and receiving the gift of his grace through the Sacraments, we have nothing to fear.  This is the vigilance that makes us strong in the Lord and leads us to the path to finding true peace and happiness.  Not by wasting time on things that distract us and cause us to lose our focus on what really matters, which is Jesus and those who lead us closer to him, especially the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Mother.

Most of you probably don’t know that I worked at M&M Mars in Waco for 18 years.  I was hired as a Maintenance Electrician.  When I started, I was put on a maintenance team with two other guys.  I’ll call them Mike and Joe.  Mike was a young electrician my age and Joe was a welder and machinist, about 20 years older than us.  Mike was what you might call a religious zealot.  
Even at work, he would give his testimony to anyone who would listen, and he had a great interest in the End of the World.  

I can remember many times late at night while on midnight shift having deep conversations in the break room or in the shop about our Christian faith and about the End Times.  Mike would often tell us that God spoke to him directly and had told him about this or that.  As the older man in the group and a good godly man, Joe was usually the one who reeled him in when he got too far out there.  Once Mike told us “God told me the world will end in two months,” and he even gave us an exact date.  Joe tried to correct him by using the words from today’s gospel.  He said, no to Mike, reminding him that the scriptures say, “No one knows the day or the hour, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  That didn’t slow Mike down a bit, claiming that it was in fact God the Father who told him that the world would end on that particular day.  

Finally, I chimed in.  
I said, “So Mike, let me get this straight, you want us to believe that God spoke to you and told you the exact day the end of the world would come?”  
He answered, “Yes, because that’s what God did.”  
So I said, “Ok so what are you doing here?”  
“What do you mean?” he replied.
I told him, “If God truly revealed to you when the end of the world was coming, and it’s only a few weeks away, what are you doing here at M&M Mars on midnight shift working on packing machines and pumps and conveyor belts? You should be out there saving as many people as you can.  You should be doing everything in your ability to let everyone in the world know what is coming. Just look at all the souls that could be saved if you can get this message out to the people.”  

It was clear that Mike didn’t like what I said because he got very quiet and then walked away.  
A few days later, he approached me and said, “What you said bothered me.”  
“What did I say?” I asked.
He said, “You said if I really believed God told me when the end was coming, why was I wasting my time here doing maintenance work instead of out in the world spreading the word.”  
I replied, “Yeah, so why did that bother you?”  
After a pause, he said, “Because you’re right.”  

Mike and I worked together for quite some time after this incident, and we had many great conversations about our Christian faith, but never again did he talk to me about the end times. 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in life there are many things that we worry about.  Things like faith, family, friends, the Church, our government, our culture, the list of things we worry about is endless.  We don’t need to create new things to worry about.  We don’t need to worry about the world ending in some cataclysmic, terrifying event, because the fact of the matter is that the world is going to come to an end and Jesus tells us that we won’t know when it will happen.  

Instead, we need to look in the mirror every day and ask ourselves:  

Do I make Jesus the most important person in my life or is he just an afterthought reserved for Sunday or when I am in dire need of his help?  

Do I surrender myself to Jesus, body, mind, and soul each day so that I may know his will for my life and be prepared to live it?

Am I where I need to be in my relationship with Jesus right now?  

Am I ready to meet Jesus face to face today for eternal judgement, recognizing that our earthly life is short while life both in Heaven and in Hell is eternal?

Jesus said, “Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to stand before the Son of Man.”  In this simple verse, Jesus gives us everything we need to know to answer each of these questions and live according to his will.

My friends, living a life focused on God and his will for our life, or living a life focused on me, myself, and I, and everywhere in between is 100% our choice.  Don’t let anyone or anything deceive you, God is always the right choice.

Let’s choose God!! Amen!