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The End of Days

            The 27-minute graphic opening scene of Saving Private Ryan cost 12 million dollars and involved 1,500 extras. Mel Gibson’s 1995 depiction of a 14th-century Scottish freedom fighter named William Wallace in Braveheart included the use of 2,000 extras for the battle scenes. The funeral scene of Gandhi set the record for the number of extras in movie films—300,000 people. While the magnitude of the production logistics of those movie scenes boggles the mind, an ancient historian recorded the number of combatants involved in the 480 B.C. real battle of Thermopylae—5,700 Greeks, led by 300 Spartans (they made a movie of that, too—300), facing a Persian force six times that size, backed by infantry, cavalry, and naval crews that numbered over 2.6 million. In 1945, the land portion of the Battle of Okinawa involved 183,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines and 67,000 Japanese.

            It’s hard to imagine that many people in one place at one time. From a bird’s-eye view, those armies must have looked like millions of ants crawling over hills and spilling out of ships. Then again, all we have to do is flick on the TV on a fall afternoon to catch the Met Life blimp’s view of over 100,000 screaming fans in the Big House in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But in the end, all of those scenes, whether staged for a movie or real, are nothing compared with the vision given to Daniel and recorded by him in his book. We are zeroing in on just two verses from chapter seven, and in a flash we are transported to a scene that does more than take our breath away, because God gave to Daniel and through him gives to us a view of The End of Days, featuring         

Our Lord

            Daniel received something we don’t any more: a direct message from God through visions in a dream. We have the Bible. Everything we need to know about how we are connected to God now and forever he has revealed to us in Scripture. God does not speak to us through dreams or visions. But before God caused all the Bible books to be written, he did occasionally communicate to his ancient people directly. However, the message God gave Daniel was not typical. It was not like the message God gave to Abraham to leave his home and go to a new land, nor like the message God gave to Joseph about feast and famine in Egypt, nor like the message God gave to Moses with a list of commands for the Israelites to keep. The vision given to Daniel on this occasion involved world history, primarily covering a span of 600 years from Daniel’s time to Jesus. What would you think if I predicted that Thailand would become the next world power, including invading and controlling America, and that after a dozen years, Argentina would dominate the globe for 200 years, and after that the Netherlands would amass an amazingly speedy army, navy, and air force to sweep across our land and other countries, spreading the Dutch language and culture to be used in global commerce and business, and after that Uzbekistan would control an empire unlike any other? You’d think I’m a few sandwiches short of a picnic and call the guys in white coats to put me in a padded cell.

            Daniel was given just such a vision. It was real, real history, and it all happened—a Babylonian Empire in Daniel’s day, followed by the Persian Empire, holding sway for 200 years, until swallowed up by Alexander the Great and the Greek language and culture, which in turn was overtaken by the Romans. But the vision given to Daniel reached its peak as God gave him not just a glimpse of the decades, years, and days of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, but a glimpse at the end of days with a scene so grand that it made Daniel’s jaw drop and makes us gasp in awe. On center stage is none other than God himself! “As I looked, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat.” Thrones indicate a courtroom scene, which means that all the empires of Daniel’s day and all the greatest world powers in history may seem impressive during their heyday, but God is going to have the last word.

            God gave himself a special title in these verses, the Ancient of Days, putting us in mind of a great mystery that goes beyond our human brain power. But God soars beyond the limits of time. “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). All we know is now and then, time past, present, and future. We had a time change in the middle of the night, giving you extra time to arrive here on time. One of two people might start checking the time in a few minutes to see if I’m getting close to the magic A-m-e-n word. In the new year we are planning to adjust our service times to accommodate the blessing of growing crowds on Sunday morning. We mark time by birthdays, baptisms, anniversaries, and retirements. But God goes beyond that. He is bigger, better, and besides, he is God. And he is the one we will face.

            Wait! The one we will face? Can’t the end of days be just that, the end? Can’t we just go into some kind of non-existence or sleep or just disappear? No! God has built into us the fact that we are relational creatures. You might enjoy spending time alone for quiet meditation or for a break from the rat race at work or from screaming kids or from school deadlines. But in reality we all need and crave connections, and the biggest, most important, and longest lasting is our connection with God. So, the scene of the end of days gives us a picture of whom we will face, because if we’re going to spend an eternity and enjoy it, that is, in order for eternity to be fun and fantastic, we have to have a relationship, a connection, with God, which takes us to the next snapshot of information in this vision…

            In order to have a relationship, a connection, with God, we have to match up to his standards. “His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze. A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him.” White equals purity. Fire purifies. Has every thought blip that passed through your mind today been as snow-white pure as God expects, including what went through your mind when the alarm went off this morning, and when you peered bleary-eyed in the mirror, and when you stepped out into the cold November wind, and when you couldn’t park as closely as you wanted, and when a baby screeched just when you tried to pay attention? And what about yesterday’s daydreams and fantasies? and tomorrow’s? Have your desires and motives been as pure as fire-refined gold, including when you saw the new car your neighbor drives or the smart phone or powerful iPad your co-worker just got or the appeal for volunteers from the church staff or when you spy the word offering in the service folder? How do you think we will match up at the end of days when standing before the Ancient of Days?

His legions

            Uh-oh! Maybe I can duck out. Maybe I can step to the side at the end of days and avoid the judging eyes of a pure and holy God. Of course, that’s not possible! How can I expect to do that when I can’t avoid the scanning machines and judging eyes of airport security personnel before I get on a plane? If you think a full-body scan by the TSA is embarrassing, what do you think the Ancient of Days will see when he scans us at the end of days and peers into the inner nooks and crannies of our heart and soul?

            How do we know we’ll all be lined up at the end of days and that there are no pass-throughs at the pearly gates? Because the throne room scene includes all creatures. “Thousands upon thousands attended him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.” If all invisible creatures, angels, are going to be there, then all visible creatures will be, too. There’s no escape, no missing out. We will all be before the throne of God. Angels, of course, don’t need judging. The bad ones are already condemned to an eternity of torture. They’ve been operating like chained dogs, and their bark can be scary, but the judgment against them is already in. The good angels are confirmed in their holiness, and there are plenty of them, more than plenty. There are actually legions of angels. In the Roman army of Jesus’ day, a legion was made up of 6,000 soldiers. God gave Daniel a peek at angels surrounding God’s throne, thousands upon thousands, legions upon legions, not twiddling their thumbs but doing his bidding and adding to the breathtaking majesty of this scene.

His ledger

            So, we know that at the end of days we will be before God himself, and we will all be there. But what will happen then? The big question that needs to be resolved from this vision, bigger than any movie production imaginable, more majestic than any event in history, is will it be good or bad? In other words, will the end of days be happy or sad for us, will it be delightful or depressing, will it be heaven or hell? The answer to that is recorded in God’s book.

            “The court was seated, and the books were opened.” I don’t picture a storybook or a history book. I picture a ledger, a record book, with each person’s name, who has ever lived or will ever live, on top of a page with all that that person has done, good or bad, and all that that person has said even when whispering, and all that that person has thought. How many thoughts go through your mind each day, in an hour, in a minute, in a second? You couldn’t count. But God can and God does. They’re all in that ledger. The books must be fairly large, wouldn’t you say? Either that or in a font so small that only God can read it. Either way, your name is on a page in God’s ledger, and my name is, too. What if your boss had such a ledger? Even if you were the perfect employee, what if it had what you were thinking or daydreaming about at work, and a record of the moments when you were wasting company time? And if you say, “Well, I’m the boss of my own company!” Then what if that ledger had comments written by your parents, or the police, or your spouse? What if it is God’s ledger? …It is! We don’t stand a chance if we’re called to account for our thinking, as dirty as it can get; or our words, as stinging as they can get; or our actions, as careless as they can get. Even if we think we would have very few bad things in God’s ledger, there’d be an endless list of good things we could have done, those times when we could have been more generous, more patient, more observant, more thankful, more caring. The bottom line of every page of God’s ledger is that if the books were opened and untouched, heaven would be empty except for God and his legions of angels.

            But God does not want it that way and didn’t design it that way. He intended paradise to include people so he would have creatures to care for and love and value forever, creatures who would love him back. That’s why the rest of Scripture is so necessary as the follow-up to this vision given to Daniel, revealing the rest of the story, which primarily consists of the amazing news that Jesus wrote onto your ledger page and mine: “Not guilty!” He took the divine cleanser, the “409” of his blood, and washed our page clean. And he didn’t leave it blank. He wrote over your page and mine all the kind and caring and giving and selfless things he did. Spider-Man 3 cost $258 million. Tangled cost $260 million. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End cost $300 million. Put them all together, and the cost of the judgment rendered over us, which will be affirmed at the end of days, exponentially exceeds them. The cost is the blood of God’s own Son. That’s why our worship on this day, known as “The Second Sunday of the End Time: The Last Judgment,” does not have a drumbeat of doom, but a tone of celebration and joy.

            We do not know when the end of days will come. When it does it will be the end of the history of THIS world. But it will not be the end of HIS-story, God’s story. HIS-story is ours, which means that the end of days will be the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth, and we will be all smiles. Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on November 6, 2011

Services

Sundays 7:45, 9:00 & 10:30 am

Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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