One of the blogs I read regularly is “Random Reflections” by Greg Boyd. He’s a former atheist, former theology professor at a Christian college, and now founder and senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church, a megachurch in St. Paul, Minn. He’s an extremely intelligent guy who writes some provocative stuff, which I increasingly find myself agreeing with (except when it comes to Openness). Turns out he’s also a spectacular drummer, as this Youtube video shows.

Pastor Tim started a series on Revelation, the first time he’s tackled that subject at Anchor. He’s not an “End is Near” kind of guy. Neither am I. Doomsdayers and gloomsayers abound, but really, the world is in remarkable shape.

Paul Collier, in his fascinating book The Bottom Billion, notes that relief agencies used to think of the world consisting of:

• one billion rich people
• five billion poor people.

Now it’s:

• one billion rich people
• one billion poor people
• four billion up-and-coming.

In China alone, 400 million people have risen out of poverty in recent years (more than America’s entire population!). Economies are also flourishing in India, Brazil, Russia, Eastern Europe, and a bunch of other countries. This is a good thing, but it doesn’t help the doomsdayers eager for the Trumpet Blast.

Certainly the world isn’t ready to hand the reigns to one guy, the AntiChrist. Things would need to be desperate for that to happen. And right now, desperate describes Zimbabwe and a smattering of other countries (among the bottom billion), but not much else. So I think Christ’s return is a long way off.

Besides, in Acts 2:17 God says, “In the last days, your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.” Is that happening?

People point to the Scripture, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars.” Well, I guess that’s pretty accurate–we do hear about them. We, at least in America, don’t really experience them. We just hear about them on the news. The rest of Matthew 24:6, which we forget, says, “These things must take place, but the end hasn’t come yet.”

But even then, since World War II, the world’s been a relatively peaceful place. We haven’t had many nation vs. nation wars, except for the Arab-Israeli wars, Iran vs. Iraq in the 1980s, and the various wars the United States has spearheaded (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq) in its effort to promote End Times books. And we mustn’t forget that Falklands dustup.

France fought and, as the French do, lost wars of independence in Indochina and Algeria. Most of the other wars since WW2 have been civil wars and guerilla conflicts. Then there are the interventions by Russia in Hungaria, Czechoslavakia, and Afghanistan, countered by our own interventions, with or without help, in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Haiti.

But as the graph at the start of this post shows, the latter years of the 1900s were pretty calm. When we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and rejoin the rest of the world in focusing on economic development, things will be far calmer still.

But those End Times book will still fly off the shelves.