SPEAKING TO THE SOUL

Let the Reader Understand

“Let the reader understand.” Yeah, right. The apocalyptic passages in the Bible are fiercely difficult to understand — so difficult that I think that to try to pry dates and details from such passages invariably leads to error, and yet there are sure lessons. Times of ghastly affliction are intense. Ordinary life is gutted. There can be unimaginable suffering, but the faithful are urged to pray with the implication that doing so can alter the way things will play out. In times of horrific misery, many of the faithful, eager for deliverance or comfort, become susceptible to following deceptive leaders and being seduced by attractive but false teaching. The temptation to find a way out of the suffering is overpowering. Or, almost overpowering.

God will “cut short” the time of the suffering for the sake of the elect, which implies that the suffering is under God’s control. It happens by his leave, and is shortened at his command; affliction cannot ever have the last word. This pattern, written large for the end times, is often enacted in the individual lives of the faithful. Then we call it a “time of testing” or “being refined like silver.” In several places in the New Testament, we are taught that such a time is, in the end, good. “Those who endure to the end will be saved.”

When Mother Teresa’s spiritual journal came out shortly after she died and revealed that she had suffered from “the dark night of the soul” for most of her adult life, one secular writer stated that she had been revealed as just an old woman who’d lost her faith. “The elect” know better: she was a saint who exhibited the grace of perseverance with an unshakable trust in God. Always, her face radiated joy. She was right.

Mark 13:14-27

“But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; 15the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; 16the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. 17Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! 18Pray that it may not be in winter. 19For in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be. 20And if the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he has cut short those days. 21And if anyone says to you at that time, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘Look! There he is!’ —do not believe it. 22False messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. 23But be alert; I have already told you everything.

24“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
25and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.