2012-366 Day 187 – End Times

It’s been a while since I’ve written about anything potentially controversial, so I thought why not let one fly today? One of our friends earned the nickname of “Mr. Sunshine” yesterday (no, it was not me, and yes, it was sarcastic), but I’m not going to let him walk the path alone. So here is potentially one of the first blog posts ever telling you why Jesus is NOT coming back today. And unlike all those stories that tell you when He is coming back, I can guarantee that my prediction is correct. Of course, I can only guarantee for the current day (July 5th, 2012) and most likely tomorrow, as one of the two factors below would have to change dramatically for me to call it close. So, why isn’t Jesus coming back today?

Factor #1 – Population: There are approximately seven billion people living on the planet right now. That is an enormous number, look at it written out: 7,000,000,000. Without a specific reference, but putting things together from what the Bible says about God and His being just there’s one major roadblock to His return. If any of those seven billion people is going to accept Him before Christ will come back, He will wait for it to happen. If that person was born today and accepted Christ on their deathbed, the average world life expectancy is 67.2 years (as of 2010). And that’s just one person, leading us to Factor #2 . . .

Factor #2 – Birth Rates: Even if you wrote off the current population as static, that there would be no change of religious status among the seven billion people currently living on this planet (an extremely unlikely occurrence, but people believe in Macro-evolution, so we’ll not go into the numbers there), you still have to deal with the people being born everyday. “In 2012 the average global birth rate was 19.15 births per 1000 total population,” which leads to about 134,050,000 births a year, or about 367,260 births a day. Taking the broadest definition of Christianity, there are an estimated 2.331 billion people who identify themselves as Christians (sincerity of faith questions will have to be levied in another blog post) or pretty much exactly 33.3% of the world population. So of those births, approximately 44,638,650 a year and 122,297 a day will be born to a household containing at least one Christian (yes, I have greatly simplified the calculations, I’ll leave more precise ones to people who actually took stats). Since this isn’t a scientific paper, we’ll allow a little hearsay at this point (not heresy, at least I hope not), in that I remember hearing somewhere that Christian homes have a higher initial conversion rates than someone who grows up in a non-religious (or differently-religioned) household (and that seems to hold up to the logic test). It seems unlikely that not one of those children born today would not become a Christian at some point in the future.

Now, while I do guarantee above that Jesus isn’t coming back today (or tomorrow), I must admit that the guarantee is only 99.99999999% certain. Why is that? Well, obviously reason number one is that I am not God. Should God choose to have Christ come back at 9:17 PDT this evening, I certainly have no way to stop Him. I can only base my reasoning off of many years of Bible study and insight into the character of God, and my conclusion is that He would not allow a single person to go unsaved should there be the opportunity. And when you look at the raw numbers, that opportunity seems to still be available in abundance.

So what could change where I would consider the return of Christ probable? I have a couple theories, and for the most part they kind of scare me (one of the reasons I haven’t committed these ideas to writing until now).

Theory #1 – Divine Intervention: This theory is the reason I can’t give a 100% guarantee. Should God decide to send Christ back and use His knowledge of what WOULD have happened should he let the world continue on its regular course to judge people, He could do so. Now, of course, you have to sign off on the idea that God is fair and all-knowing to be able to judge things on how they would have been, but if you believe in the God described in the Bible, you should already be there. I have difficulties with this one because it appears to assume that there is no one who will be born that will be converted, and I’m uncertain the world is in that place yet. I find my second theory far more likely (and far more frightening) . . .

Theory #2 – Mankind Blows It: And doesn’t this sound far more likely anyway? If you believe in the Bible and the return of Christ, there should probably be a little bit of Doomsday Prepper in you, if not a whole lot. Now there’s several ways that this can occur, from a giant apostasy (basically the whole world turning from God), in which case you have an entire society which has rejected Order and Light and likely will not be functioning well, or the potential doomsday scenario where an arms race, ecological problem, or just downright negligence with forces beyond our control lead to the destruction of a large percentage of the world’s population. Many people have claimed that Christ’s return is near because Israel was reconstructed as a state in 1948 and, according to prophecy, Christ will return within a generation of that happening. However, there is doubt as to whether that specific prophecy exists. Further, if it did exist, it seems possible that Israel could rise and fall multiple times before the return of Christ.

Does this remove the urgency from finding Christ or bringing others to Him? No, because buried in all those high concept numbers and ideals is one very specific and non-imaginary variable – you. And you have a non-zero chance of being struck by lightning tomorrow, among other more dangerous and likely occurrences, in which case don’t you think it would have been wiser to resolve the whole question of God, His existence, and what He means to you today? I won’t put forth any of those arguments today as I have already gone on for far too long and there are many others who have done so better than I ever could (you can go for a good starting point here).

So the next time someone predicts the return of Christ on my birthday (like they did last year), and it doesn’t happen, you can point them to this blog post for a brief explanation as to why.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 189.6 miles
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