These days, the hottest place is YouTube. Because you can make good money through it, more videos than you can count are uploaded to the site every day. It is also the place where we spend a lot of our time. The problem is that there isn’t a filter, videos from creators with many subscribers or videos with many views are shown on the front page, and videos that are strangely specific to my tastes also show up, making it difficult to know what to watch.
During the pandemic one topic that has interested Christians is theology surrounding the end of the world, also known as eschatology. The unparalleled infectious disease, coronavirus, was one factor and, related to the vaccine, there are many who came to believe in conspiracy theories. Because they put forth medical experts’ opinions it was hard to ignore.
It is therefore important to look at how Jesus told his disciples to address curiosity about the end times, a curiosity that came up whenever they were facing difficult times. When you look at the Gospels, when the disciples heard about the prophecy of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem they asked about the time and signs of the end of days. In a time when persecution of Christians was greater, the believers of Thessalonica were struck by the second coming of Christ as taught to them by Paul and stopped doing their daily tasks. Matthew 24 and Thessalonians 2 speak to the curiosity surrounding the end times.
To the disciples who asked about when the end times would come, he drove home that it wasn’t theirs to know. About the signs of the end times, earthquakes and disease would be the start of the end times, not the end. Christ’s second coming and the appearance of antichrists would be easily determined and something that would happen around the world, not something that people would be unsure about or that would require great skill of discernment. If that was the case, people could fall into conspiracies with people saying they were Christ.
Regarding the end of days, all of Jesus’ words and his disciples’ teachings similarly emphasize that living according to the gospel is important and the best way to prepare for the end times. It’s pointless that conspiracy theorists who say that all of our personal information is being collected to control us don’t use SNS or a cell phone. So there’s only one choice. Suffer persecution and live as a witness to Christ.
But if you are not living with the freedom, joy, and boldness of the Gospel, even if you are keen to all the information conspiracy theorists provide, there will be no choice but to bend your knee to the antichrist. It’s not like bowing to a shrine, not knowing that shrine worship is wrong, but it’s bowing even though you know it’s wrong but you are afraid not too. Discernment is obviously in the Gospel and that is experiencing abundance and receiving the Holy Spirit’s direction. It’s enough to love the Bible whose promises have been completed by God, through his son, Jesus Christ. If you are motivated by fear, no matter how hard you try to judge the current age, you can only fall into confusion.
