I think I just wrote on this subject a couple weeks ago (Click HERE for previous article).  The Jesus Movement, of which I was a part of, in the 1970s was very much caught up in the notion that Jesus was coming back very soon and that was central to the urgency of the message that everyone needs to be “saved.” The first Christian musicians that I became aware of had songs about the need for all of us to be ready for Jesus’ return and the consequences if we failed. 

We took the book of Revelation and the whole Bible, for that matter, very literally. It was the small non-denominational churches, like Calvary Chapel, against “the World” and knowing one’s Bible was essential to survive the coming seven-year tribulation and the literal war that was going to take place in the Valley of Megiddo in Israel. And the only way to escape all of that was to be a born-again Christian and hope that you would be one of those whom God would rescue in the Rapture and take up physically into heaven during all of this world shattering turmoil. It probably didn’t help that my fellow believers and I were under the impression that the areas around Israel were constantly in some form of armed or military conflict and that sooner or later it would blow up into a huge battle that would require the intervention of God and Jesus’ return. 

We weren’t into predicting exact dates of when all of this would happen, but Pastor Chuck Smith (of Calvary Chapel) connected all of this with the founding of the modern state of Israel in the 1948. And with Jesus’ promise in the gospels that he would come back within the lifetime of the generation that saw the rebirth of Israel,1 and a generation being about 40-years, then the expectation was that Jesus would return by 1988. 

Alas, by 1988 I had moved away from my Calvary Chapel roots, briefly worked on a Masters in Theology at Fuller Seminary and was more Evangelical than Fundamentalist, but, for the sake of our story, I’d lost track of my former Calvary Chapel friends and associates. So I don’t know how they “adjusted” their views on the imminent return of Jesus. I would guess the transitions from being teenagers to young adults altered what we were mainly focusing on and might have naturally lowered the constant drum-beat of a soon returning savior and more about getting a job and figuring out what to do after college (you know, adult stuff). 

Somewhat like John Green, as time went on and the return of Jesus continued to not happen, I became much more aware that my own life was finite and that regardless of when Jesus might come back, I most certainly had a personal expiration date. And, as time went on people all around me, both acquaintances, friends and family members, began to pass away. It was kind of hard to ignore. Then I suffered my own physical “challenges,” and the reality of one’s finite existence grew in “importance.” It can have an interesting way of focusing one’s priorities. 

Long before this, I came to understand the role and purpose of apocalyptic literature, especially the Book of Revelation and the like, as being the kinds of stories and narratives that a community is going to produce, especially when they are under oppression and their future is far from certain. Under those circumstances storytellers and leaders are going to imagine the opposite of their current situation as a means of encouraging them to persist and support one another. My feeling is that the production of the Hebrew Bible is part of this process of unexpected catastrophes and facing a possible future that doesn’t include their culture or certainly the culture that they experienced just a single generation ago, things like the Assyrian and then the Babylonian exiles. Before our lights are turned out possibly forever, so to speak, let’s write all of this down and save it for future generations to discover or re-discover. The fact that the gospels were not written until at least thirty years after Jesus’ cruxifixction and the founders of the community were passing away, a necessity arose to get these stories written down preserving the stories that up until then they were perfectly okay with just having oral traditions. The founders passing away (with Jesus still not returning) also has an interesting way of “adjusting” the message also. 

One of the Christian musicians who was very influential in the early 70s was Larry Norman and his song, “I wish we’d all been ready.” I wanted to find a video of him performing this song and found a version recorded in 2001. In the video he ad-libs some of the lyrics to include people just passing away unprepared for the after-life and not just about being ready for Jesus’ imminent return. Norman passed away in 2008. JBB

Sources:

Tags: Crash Course Religions, end of the world, in bad faith, Larry Norman, video Mondays

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FOOTNOTES:
  1. Mark 13: 3-37, especially verse 30: “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (ESV). A similar story can be found in Matthew 24: 3-46, especially verse 34.[↩]