The return of Christ in the 21st Century
At the advent of the 21st century, the Church of God Almighty and of his son Jesus finds itself searching for identity. The evenagelical wave of the last decades of the 20th century is losing steam as more and more of its congregants disappear into the ebbing tide of doubt , disbelief, lethargy and irreverence. In response to this, the Emerging Church has found its champions and it has picked up the banner of Christ valiantly and while there will be personal victories for the relatively few that can be reached by this localized message, the fact of the matter is that the world soul has moved on searching for what it knows not and unwilling to return to the counsel of the Church no matter what form it takes.
The human species is starting to experience the onset of global crises that can lead to our destruction. Global warming, causing weather fluctuations that will alter whole ecosystems and severe earth, air and water pollution, resulting from 2nd and 3rd world economies operating on overdrive in an attempt to catch up to 1st world living standards, are but two of the titans bent on our destruction. There is yet a third evil that will shortly appear and it rises from the vacuum left by the dissipation of faith in the goodness of the common man. It is the spectre of religious war as Christians and Jews square off against Muslims and Palestinians and the hope of an entire world desirous of believing in a loving and just God is sacrificed on the altar of our religious pride. We have sequestered Jesus and hidden Him from a world in need because we are more interested in making disciples than in letting the Spirit choose whom He will. We feel no shame at our scandalous display of discord over every detail of God Most High. Is He one or many? Does He have a son or not? Does He love all or just His own? Do not be deceived. It is not the secular or the contrarian that is responsible for this crisis in faith. It is our fault.
The human species has begun debating whether these crises are in fact crises at all and if so, how will we be able to mobilize the world’s governments to action. In this debate the Christian voice is at best deafeningly mute and at worse dubious of the existence of such dangers. How can the followers of the Prince of Peace hold such positions? The answer is simple. We want to see the calamities. It is common knowedge that Christians world wide believe that global crises of various sorts must occur before our saviour returns. We want to see the Armageddon come.
