Mark 13:6-8 ESV
Russian ambassador assassinated by Turkish man. Twelve killed by truck-driving terrorist at a Berlin Christmas market. Syria decimated by civil war. Wars and rumors of war.
I have no doubt that with every season of global conflict people have quoted Mark 13 and the parallel verses in Matthew 24. Perhaps this is just one other false start to the "end of the age", but there are few geo-global reassurances this time around. A rising China. A muscle-flexing Russia. A divided America. A disintegrating European Union. The Middle East is. . . well, still the Middle East.
If Christians were to ever feel an urgency to be Jesus' "witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” it should be now. The world is a tinder box. Putin, Russia's president, is calling the act of one lone gunman a "provocation". America's President-elect is an isolationist. China's leadership gets upset over a phone call with Taiwan.
But even with the state of global affairs in such chaos, it is still perhaps only the "beginning of birth pains". It is now we must spread Christ's message of reconciliation to a world full of hate and destruction. America's Christians are in a unique position of relative peace and financial security to continue to be the "light on the hill" for Jesus. If we do not use our place in the world at this time in history, God may very well remove His hand from our land. Either we use it or lose it.
I have a quote on my laptop that reads, "If not us, then who? If not now, then when?" Words for today's Church to live (or die) by.
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| Aleppo, Syria |
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| Ankara, Turkey |
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