The Time is Near... Always

“The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him
​to show his servants what must soon take place... because the time is near.”
Revelation 1:1, 3 (NIV)

The time is near.

John, the human author of Revelation, scribbled these words on parchment in 95 A.D. It's now 2019. In the intervening years, the world has seen wars, plagues, the rise and fall of empires, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. And with every generation there have been people in the Christian church assuring the world, "No really, the time really is near." Sometimes these people are scholars. Sometimes they are street preachers. But they are always there. They have always been there, in every generation, every time, every place. And yet, here we are 1,924 years later...

Was John wrong? Or did all these people after him just misunderstand him?

Well, the short answer is yes. John was wrong.

And no. He wasn't.

Yes, John was wrong because it's likely that he honestly believed that "the time is near" meant that Jesus was going to return during his lifetime, or at least during the lifetimes of his followers in Asia Minor. This belief is why he wrote with such urgency and its what gave the original recipients of Revelation the courage and conviction to stand up for Jesus and face the social and economic repercussions of their faith. Their belief, though it turned out to be chronologically inaccurate, led them to a faithful response to the word of God.

These original hearers of Revelation are like the heroes of faith listed in Hebrews 11: "These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised." (Heb. 11:39, NIV)

At the same time, I think it's also accurate to say that John and his followers were not wrong at all, nor were those who proclaimed "the end is near" from the 2nd Century up until the 21st. Because the actual point of John's claim of the nearness of the end is proximity not chronology.

We're always near the end, whether it comes tomorrow or 3,000 years from now.

Jesus himself recognized this and often said, "The kingdom of heaven is near."

It's like the Doomsday Clock, the symbol used by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to "warn the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making" (thebulletin.org). During the Clock's existence, it has never been ore than 17 minutes to midnight. As of 2019, it is 2 minutes to midnight.

The nearness of Jesus' return is like the Doomsday clock: it is always near midnight, and we should always be prepared for it. The fact that we didn't wipe ourselves out during the Cold War doesn't mean that it didn't nearly happen. In the same way, the fact that Jesus didn't return in the last 1900 years doesn't mean that his return wasn't immanent that entire time.

So the question we're left with is the same one that John's original readers were given: what will you do with the time you have? What will you do in preparation for Jesus' immanent return?

Because the time is near.

Grace and peace,