Making Jesus Come Back

Though this topic warrants many books and will, perhaps, not play out in the lifetimes of any reading this, I must address it. I grew up on the edge of the controversy – when will Jesus come again and how will he come? My family always said, not withstanding all the preachers who came and went and how many radio preachers my grandmother sent money to,- “we don’t know; we can’t know; anyone is a fool to say they know.” They had bible verses to back this up. Notwithstanding, there was a print of a painting on Granny Hicks’ wall at all the places she lived in my lifetime that depicted the event, replete with 1950ish trains, planes and automobiles, driverless, crashing. Some in white raiment were rising from graves and mothers were leaving their meal preparation to join a Raphaelite Jesus in the sky. The caption below read “The Rapture”. This is the “event”, from a set of Bible fragments along with the writings of a few preachers who arose from Protestantism in the same era as Shakers, Mormons, Brethren, etc. (the common thread is making the teachings of Jesus secondary to later revelations), that became first a cottage industry, the money machine along with border radio and finally the mega million dollar financial colossus that includes Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Ken Lahey (of “Left Behind” fame). Personally, I don’t know how the “end times” will play out, but this late-arriving, science fiction-like scenario does not sound like what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of His Kingdom.

So why do I worry about such? These people are hijacking “Evangelical Christianity” which I once thought I was part of. A couple of years ago, on NPR, I heard an interview of “leading fundamentalists” discussing their excitement that the number of influential people now in the US government are bible believing Christians – meaning “dispensationalists” they explained to Diane Rehm. Diane had not a clue, it seemed, to what they were talking about. This group claim as their leaders, a kind old soul - Billy Graham and frothy-mouthed John Hagee of San Antonio. The Sunday before the 2006 Texas gubernatorial election, Rick Perry, our good old boy governor, was in splashy evidence at Hagee’s church. I first came to know of Hagee back in the eighties when his daughter by his first wife was trying to make it on $100/month living expenses at Baylor (I knew one of her suite-mates). He was at the time sporting a new wife and a new church and developing his, what I call, “how can I make it ready for Jesus to come back?” theology. This approach includes using part of his millions to buy Russian Jews plane tickets to the West Bank while some of his fellow travelers are searching for a Red Heifer that must be found in order to rebuild the Third Temple in Jerusalem. AND it is this theology that drove Tom Delay’s and, perhaps, Bush’s Middle East policies. W is not your regular old Methodist.

The web is full of information about dispensationalist ideas and I encourage readers to look at a little of what our foreign policy is being based on. What does the God of Abraham think when he sees this scurrying around to force his hand? Hint – I will not be in the battle at Har Megiddo and I think too that Jesus will not be there as some nouveaux Leonidas slashing Arabs and effete San Franciscans, but will continue with his gift that is truth.