Sunday, April 18, 2010 – AM
By Pastor James May
A lot of you, I am sure, are aware of the fact that in recent weeks there has been an upsurge in the news concerning the 2012 and the prediction of the end of the world. I spoke on this, or at least started to, several weeks ago, but this morning I believe that God wants me to talk about it again.
There is popular movie out right now that depicts the events of the end of the earth with truly outstanding graphical effects. Of course they depict it as though it is not really the end, but a series of tremendous natural disasters that encompass all of the things that scientists have been saying about global warming, earthquakes and other things. In the end, man is able to save himself from annihilation and is able to begin again to build a better world. It’s man saving himself as usual and God has nothing to do with it in the movie. But how much of what we are hearing can we believe? Is 2012 a date that we should be preparing ourselves for?
First let’s establish what the real hoopla of 2012 is all about. According to an ancient civilization of Mayans, a tribe of superstitious people who lived in what is now called the southern part of Mexico about 1000 years ago, we are nearing the end of the world as we know it. The Mayans are famous because they managed to create a written language and accomplish some pretty amazing engineering marvels long before any other people in the western hemisphere. Of course, all of these skills had been accomplished thousands of years before in Israel, Egypt and most of the Eastern Hemisphere.
The interest in the Mayan calendar, and the fact that so many people are concerned over what the Mayans had to say, is baffling when you consider that the prophecies of the Word of God existed in Hebrew and Greek scrolls many centuries before the Mayan Calendar, or the Mayan civilization reached its potential. Yet man would rather believe something that man has figured out, rather than to believe in the Word of God.
According to the Mayan Calendar, which is confusing, contradictory, and requires many hours of study to interpret; the sun, moon and planets will all come into perfect alignment of some sort and will trigger some ethereal cosmic energy that will mark the dawning of a new day for mankind.
I’m here to tell you that every day is a new day for mankind; and the power and energy that brings the day forward is the awesome power of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I don’t need some ancient Mayan Priest to cut the head off a chicken, or throw a set of bones, or stare at the sun for hours to tell me that. All I have to do is read the Bible.
In the beginning God created the earth, brought forth the sun and moon, created day and night, and started the cycle of seasons, months and years that has continued to this day.
After creating all things, God said in Genesis 8:22, "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." So it isn’t some great mystery to know that, should the earth remain, tomorrow the sun will rise again.
But the Mayans had never read the Bible and so they had to rely only on what they could see of the natural world around them to try to interpret the future. Since they were very much into early forms of astrology and astronomy, they began to develop a whole system of life and of worship based on the positions of the stars and planets at given times of the year. That’s how they established their calendar for planting, harvesting and daily life. They noticed things like eclipses and how the moon and star alignments would change with the passing of the night all during their year. Some of them sat gazing for months on end and they began to see slight changes in the positions of the stars of the night over a long period of time. And so they used this new found knowledge to establish their calendar.
Now we all know that God set the stars in the sky and with the passing of the months and the changes in the seasons, the positions of the constellations change. As each pattern of stars moves across the sky, God has laid them out in specific patterns that show the story of the coming of the Messiah and of the Kingdom of God.
Psalms 19:1-4, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,"
Several years ago we did a short study on the constellations and what they tell us about the story of Jesus. The important thing to note here is that there is some truth about the alignment of the stars and their ability to tell of some future events. However, they do contradict the Word of God, but are place in support of what God has to say. After all, God put them there for a purpose, not only to give us light in the darkness, and make the night sky beautiful to look upon, but to enlightened the heart of men who would take the time to learn what they had to say.
The problem is that astrology and occultism have changed the message to be something that it was never intended to be. We are not to base our lives on the alignment of the planets and stars. We are to base our lives on the Word of God and the Lord Jesus Christ alone. The power that controls my life, and yours, is not found in the stars, but in the hand of God.
The Mayans somehow figured out long mathematical calculations and then formed predictions based on how the stars would be aligned on certain dates far into the future; even beyond the very existence of their own civilization.
My question is that if the Mayans were so smart and knew how to predict the future, why didn’t they figure out that they would become extinct and then try to stop it from happening? They eventually were destroyed by the Spanish, either through wars or through the new diseases that the Spanish brought, that wiped out entire villages.
The Mayan Calendar was discovered among the ruins of their civilization and many people have dedicated their whole life into learning what it had to say. One of their great discoveries was that the entire calendar was created to be an ancient clock, counting down the days until it reached a zero hour when all the planets would be in perfect position to cause the end of the world and the beginning of a new one.
The date and time that the Mayan Calendar comes to an end is very precise. It marks the end of the world as Friday, December 21, 2012 at 11:11:11 AM (Coordinated Universal Time, which is the time established universally according to the Atomic Clock at Fort Collins, Colorado)
If that’s true, then as of 4:47 this morning, we had exactly 978 days, or 23472 hours until the end of the world as we know it. That’s less than three years so you better start planning to see a big change in the way things are. Time is ticking away and we will reach zero hour before you know it.
The whole world is watching and wondering if this could really be the day. Did the Mayans know something that we don’t know? Could they have been intelligent enough to figure out God’s timetable? Could they be right? The answer of course is that they could be right. The world could end on December 21, 2012; at least for some of us. But if it does it will be purely coincidental because I don’t believe that they were smart enough to figure God out; and according the Bible their timetable is all wrong.
As Jesus sat upon the Mount of Olives one day, teaching the crowd that gathered to hear him, the disciples came to him and wanted to know what the signs of the end would be. Jesus gave them the signs but then said this in Matthew 24:36, "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."
Matthew 25:13, "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh."
From the words of Jesus it is clear that no man can predict the end of the world; not even those wonderful Mayans. God is no respecter of persons and he won’t tell any man anything that he would hold in secret for another. So I believe that we can disregard anything that some ancient Mayan Calendar has to say about the end of the world. We need to hear what the Word of God says instead.
The important thing to remember is that the end of the world is coming, and for many of us the end of our days on this planet may come long before the end of the world itself. Every day there are thousands of people around the world whose world comes to an end. Their days are ended and they will leave this world to face their eternal reward.
We should not concern ourselves with any date that man may set for the end of the world, for any date that we set; however we set it, is against the Word of God. We don’t need to worry about dates. We need to be concerned with getting our hearts right with God and being ready all the time; so that when the end comes for each of us, we will be ready to meet the Lord.
Secondly, let me give you a brief rundown on what the timetable for the end of the world is really like. Its all given to us in God’s Word. Lately we have been studying the Book of Revelation on Sunday nights and we are learning about the events that will happen in these last days.
The next thing on the agenda of God’s prophetic calendar concerning the end of the world is something that we call “The Rapture of the Church”. The Bible doesn’t say it’s a “rapture”. That word never appears. But what the Bible does say is that there will be a great “catching away”.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
On that day, this world will come to an end for every Born Again, washed in the Blood of Jesus, Child of God that has made themselves ready for the coming of the Lord. That day could be today, tomorrow or any day now. That’s what we need to be watching for; the Rapture of the Church and the Sound of the Trumpet as we are caught away to leave this old sinful world behind. I don’t know when that day or hour shall be, but it could very well happen long before December 21, 2012. It could happen on the very moment that the Mayans said, but if it does it will be a one in a billion chance.
What about the real end of the world; when will that come? Again I say that we cannot set a date, but we can see the signs of the end happening all around us every day. God’s Word concerning the signs of these last days reads like our daily newspaper.
Matthew 24:32-33, "Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors."
Just as we can walk outside right now and see that the trees have put on new leaves; and pollen fills the air, we know that spring has come and that summer is just around the corner on our calendars; we can also examine the daily news and know that the coming of the Lord is upon us. Only someone who is blind; or refuses to see the truth; could possibly be caught unaware. If you are watching for His coming; waiting for His coming and ready for Jesus’ coming, then there’s no way that you are going to miss it.
The very first step in God’s prophetic clock toward the end of time has already taken place. That was the date in 1948 when Israel became a nation once again after nearly 2000 years of being dispersed among the Gentile nations.
The next tic of God’s time clock will be the rapture of the church. After that there will be a short period of time, perhaps a few days, or a few months – just how long we don’t know for sure; before the Antichrist rises to power. From the time that he comes to power you can set your clock because within the next 7 years it all comes crashing down and the earth, as it is today is changed.
Jesus will come again, with the saints dressed in white and will establish his 1000 year reign of peace on earth. The earth will be the same except that peace and justice will prevail and the power of Satan will be stopped for 1000 years.
At the end of that 1000 years, or the Mellennial Reign of Christ, then comes the end when Satan will be loosed one last time to rally every man on earth, who has not accepted Jesus as Lord, to fight against God and his people. On that day, the world will truly come to an end and God will create a new heaven and a new earth which will last forever.
So you see, this old world is going to be around for at least another 1007 years according the Word of God. The Mayan Calendar prediction of 2012 is nothing more than the foolishness of man trying to figure out God. We have nothing to fear from 2012; no more than from any other year.
Should we prepare ourselves for 2012? Yes, but no more than we should prepare ourselves at any other time. If you truly want to make Heaven your home, you must make those preparations now and be ready all the time. Jesus may come on April 18, 2010. Are you ready to meet him should he come today?
Never rely on anyone who sets a date for God’s prophetic end of the world to come. No man knows; and no man ever will. But we do know that that day is coming soon. Make yourself ready; stay ready, then when Jesus comes again you will begin your first day in a whole new world. That’s what really matters.
Do you know Jesus today? Do you know him as your Lord and Savior? Have you been born again by the Spirit of God and had your sins washed away by the Blood of Jesus? You can do that right now if you haven’t, and then you won’t have to worry about 2012 or any other date. You can be ready for the Second Coming of Jesus and the end of the world all of the time.
