Did you hear that? It was the sound of a PHA (potentially hazardous asteroid) more than two football fields long whizzing by as it nearly missed our planet . Experts tell us there is nothing we can do to stop it.
News sources stoked fears of the end of the world by reporting the near miss, and even quoted some scientists who say that a life ending impact sometime in the future is inevitable.
(Nevermind that near earth asteroids are not new, there are thousands of them, and by “near miss” astronomers mean 7 times farther than the moon.)
Stephen Hawking has even set dates for the end of life as we know it! Last year he predicted we have less than 1000 years to get off the planet. This spring he revised his date setting to a mere 100 years.
It is a myth that only religious zealots herald the end of the world. Actually, end of world scenarios are declared all the time by people in secular society.
Technologists and futurists were wrong about Y2K.
Spiritualists were wrong about the Mayan calendar in 2012.
Wasn’t it politicians that stoked fear of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War?
It is in our nature to ponder the end of all things. We are drawn to it like flypaper. None of us want to be trapped by its allure, but we see it there.
Whole societies have been moved by public secular gospel preaching that follows end of world predictions. Everyone knows we are all going to die. It is only a matter of when, why, and how to solve it?
Hawkings solution is NASA. He advises us all to go to heaven: he wants to fly to Mars.
He preaches the bad news of death from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then comes the gospel of more government funding to fly Matt Damon to the red deserts of Mars.
What if he’s wrong and the robot apocalypse comes first? Their good news (gospel) is that you can live forever in a computer and exchange your worries about cholesterol for worries about latency.
(Why do their solutions always sound worse than the beginning?)
Like Hawking, the gospel I preach includes going to heaven, and like the transhumanists, the Bible solution involves eternal life.
However, Scripture tells me that the gospel is Jesus Christ. The one man who defeated death for all humanity, and paid for their sins in doing so, is offering eternal life by grace through faith in him.
This is why God has not given us who are saved the “spirit of fear” (2 Tim 1:7). Jesus Christ is our hope. Fear and alarm describe our culture today. The gospel of grace provides salvation, peace, and a sound mind.
Mars is not our salvation. Neither is technology nor science. Salvation requires faith in the creative genius and power of God that made you, to do the work to make you part of a new creature in Christ.
It is more certain that Christ will save you than that you will step one foot on Mars or that you will become the next killer app.
Everyone believes something will kill us all eventually. We’re all dead men. To find the solution people need the one who started life to help us with the end.
“For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” – Colossians 3:3-4
Glory with Christ sounds a lot better than living in a floppy disk.
Article Index Published: June 24, 2017
Last Modified: September 27, 2019