This may (is) my first religiously-serious blog post. And I don't want to ruffle any feathers here, especially with my Born-Again Christian friends, but this is simply a fascinating topic I'd like to discuss publicly.
The New York Times published a fascinating article yesterday titled: "Make my Bed, But You said The World's Ending Tomorrow" which I highly recommend y'all read.
The article does a great job of raising many of the moral issues of such a stance - that planning for the future (including paying mortgage, planning summer trips, saving for kids' college, etc.) doesn't matter since they'll be taken up tomorrow, and how such stances affects believers' skeptical (ergo damned) children.
Yet regardless of how funny this looks and sounds, the truth of the matter is that we Latter-Day Saints be in the same boat some years down the road, so we really don't have any room to mock. I'm reading 3rd Nephi right now and the material covered in this NYTimes article painfully reminds me of how the believers were treated prior to Christ's visit to the Americas...
Also, I was speaking about this with a fellow at work and he pointed out another interesting correlation with the Book of Mormon - that by the time Christ did come to visit America, there had been so many signs that the people didn't care to look at the signs any longer and were not prepared for His coming. If excitement for rapture, 2012 and similar events continue to happen, by the time it's our job to truly wrap everything up, everyone will be numb (more so than they are now) to our message.
Fascinating topic... I'd love to see your comments either in Facebook, Google Buzz, or here in the comment box.
FYI: Heidi and I will be watching BYU cream Cal at the national championship rugby game in Sandy during the appointed time of the rapture. :-)
I agree with you, Sean! People will be lulled away into indifference.
ReplyDeleteYou raised an interesting question. Not trying to sound too "case-interview-ish," but I think this structure kinda helps understand this issue better: there are only two possible options for the so-called "end of the world," there is the REAL one, and all the COUNTERFEIT ones.
ReplyDeleteIf we look at what's different between these two types of outcomes, we can see that for the REAL one, we just won't know when exactly when it happens, while the other fake ones claim to have a SPECIFIC date. Another aspect to consider is PROOF. The real end-of-the world does not need more proof than the ones that are described in the scriptures; the counterfeits, well, things like calendars, meteors, starts alignments, and numbers (like 12-12-12), to me, they are only proof that they are obviously way off on their forecast.
What do you think?
Well it's pretty well documented in scripture that no man knows when the second coming will be. Therefore, anything that comes from a random person on earth is shallow to me.
ReplyDelete