Don't Be Side Tracked

SERMON: Mk 13:1-37

Advent is the time when we look forward to Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem.

So is it not a little strange that the readings for the second Sunday before Advent, should be about Jesus’ second coming – a date in the future rather than to the events leading up his birth in Bethlehem.

Well I like AI’s comment on the matter.

It is because Advent is also a time to prepare for Jesus’s return and to reflect what it means to be ready for Him (AI Overview)

Mk 13 is one of the hardest chapters in the Gospels to understand.

Because Jesus speaks of future events.

Jesus prophesies quite clearly the Fall of the Temple in Jerusalem in Mk 13:2.

This actually happened in AD 70 – and with it came the end of the Jewish era.

But Jesus also prophesied the end of the world too.

And we will be wise to learn from history.

As Michael Green, one of my tutors at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford so ably put it:

“ History is going somewhere. It is not meaningless. It is not random . It is not eternal.

There will be a real end just as there was a real beginning. And at the end of it, we will find Jesus Christ. (Michael Green – The Message of Matthew p.253)

History is in a real sense Jesus’ story. Michael Green put it well when he said:

“He made the world; He came to dwell in it. He will return at the end of history to wind it up”

(Michael Green – The Message of Matthew p. 250)

You might ask well what does history have to do with us.

Winston Churchill put it well when said.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it

Though we live in the present, we must learn from the mistakes of the past.

So why then did Jesus bother to tell us about the future.

I can think of three reasons:

1. Firstly to warn us so we are not led astray by false prophets

There has always been a propensity for people to be attracted by prophetic utterances about the future

Story: In the late 19th Century in America there was an enthusiasm for such prophecies predicting the actual date for Christ’s Second Coming.

One such prophet was an Adventist leader William Miller (1782-1849).

And it is from his movement that the Seventh Day Adventists find their roots.

Miller first predicted that Christ would return on 21st March 1842, but when Christ did not come on 21st March 1842 then revised the date to April 3, 1843.

When April 4th 1843 came you might have thought that the movement would have died.

But it didn’t. Rather it continued to grow.

Miller decided to recalculate his date for the Second Coming and soon publicised a new date - April 18, 1844.

When the Messiah did not show up on that date, there was again frustration and some followers left the Adventist ranks.

Undeterred by these failures, Miller came up with a third date - 22nd October 1844.

As doomsday approached, the Millerites began to prepare for Jesus’ second coming.

One account notes that “Fields were left unharvested, shops were closed, people quit their jobs, paid their debts, and freely gave away their possessions with no thought of repayment.”

William Miller himself began peddling white “ascension robes” to the faithful, many of whom waited for the miraculous event in freshly dug graves.

Lew Slade paints the scene like this

"It is just before midnight on October 22 1844.

Come with me to a hillside just outside New York.

It’s a balmy evening and we are standing in an enormous crowd numbering upwards of 100 000 men, women and children.

All around us there is the low buzz of whispered voices as men exchange stories of how they have sold their homes, given up their jobs or abandoned their farms to be here.

An almost tangible air of expectation hangs over the gathering.

Standing at the top of the hill is a lone figure – his name is William Miller – and most of the eyes in the crowd are trained on him.

He is their leader.

He is the man who has spent years studying the prophecies in the Book of Daniel and has predicted the second coming of Christ at midnight on this day.

Needless to say midnight comes and goes and slowly, sadly, certainly reluctantly, the crowd begins to drift away.

Some, who have wagered their entire livelihoods on the truth of Miller’s words, hesitate a little longer looking skywards expecting at any moment that they will see, in Jesus’ own words, the “Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”

But as we know, it was not to be.