A priest and pastor from the same town are standing by the side of the road holding up a sign that reads, "The End is Near! Turn yourself around now before it's too late!" They planned to hold up the sign to each passing car. "Leave us alone you religious nuts!" yelled the first driver as he sped by. From around the curve they heard screeching tires and a big splash. "Do you think," said one clergy to the other, "we should just put up a sign that says 'Bridge Out' instead?"

Christian claims about the end being near have been a source of confusion, misunderstanding and not a little tragedy for 2,000 years. Richard Kyle has written an interesting book entitled, The Last Days Are Here Again: A History of the End Times. In it he details one failed prediction for the end of the world after another. It might be funny except that there have always been impressionable people who have literally sold their belongings, given away all the proceeds and gone up on a mountaintop to await the end only to discover that, once again, somebody miscalculated.

If you Google "Are these the last days," or anything like that, you will find plenty of self-professing Christian groups who believe that the end of the world is arriving any time now. They have always been around, they have always proclaimed the same message with myriad biblical texts to back them up, and they have always been wrong. Some could even make the case that Jesus was wrong when in certain apocalyptic texts he says I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened (Matthew 24:34). And the same could be said of Paul and other New Testament writers.

I have a problem with that. If Jesus, Paul and the biblical testimony are wrong about this, they could be wrong about a lot of things. I do not think they are wrong, but I do think we tend to misunderstand them over and over again. If the truth cannot have been that the date for the end of the world was year 110 or 1210 or 1810 or 2010, what must the truth have been and what must it be for people who thought and wrote as they did then? My real problem with reading something that has clearly been wrong into the text is that we distract ourselves from what the text is really saying.

I think these texts have a profound message for us today if they are properly understood, and we are going to test that notion with our text for today. I read today’s text not too long ago when we concluded our Bible Read-A-Thon. Our text contains the concluding text of the Christian Bible. Just like the Bible begins: In the beginning (Genesis 1:1) with God creating all this and our arrival in it, so the Bible ends with our exit from all of this.

The biblical witness is that our exit from all of this is not the end of us. We exit one place and we enter another, and Jesus is going to come and transport us from one place to the other. During a memorial service yesterday I quoted Jesus, just before his arrest and crucifixion, speaking with his disciples about heaven: I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am (John 14:2-3).

When this life ends Jesus comes back and takes the saved to be with him in heaven. Those who are not saved are, well, not saved. They don’t get into heaven. It is within this context that Jesus says three times in the final chapter of the Bible, "I am coming soon" (Vs 7, 12 & 20). Indeed, in the next to the last verse of the Bible Jesus says, "Yes, I am coming soon" (Verse 20). There is no doubt about the sense of urgency that is being communicated in our text.

But what does soon mean? I am reminded of how God answered a man who asked him some questions. "God, what is a million years to you?" God answered, "A million years to me is only a second." The man asked, "God, what is a million dollars worth to you?" God replied, "A million dollars to me is worth only a penny." The man lifted his eyebrows and asked his final question. "God, can I have a penny?" God answered, "Sure, give me a second."

This is how we have tried to resolve this disconnect between Jesus coming soon and Jesus not coming yet. If a million years is like a second to Jesus then "soon" for him could be a billion years away for us. But if Jesus is not coming for a billion years, then what happens to the sense of urgency? To me this represents an unreasonable stretch of credulity. To me there must be another way to understand these texts which dissipates all the contradictions and false predictions and leaves only solid sense and, more importantly, wisdom for the living of our lives.

What if these apocalyptic texts are not about the end of this world, but the end of our world? What if they are a metaphor for the hour of our deaths? Anyone know when the day or hour of their death will arrive? In the apocalyptic texts Jesus says, No one knows about that day or hour… (Matthew 24:36). All we are told is that Jesus is coming soon to take the righteous to heaven where he has prepared a place for them. But that begs the question, how soon is soon and why all the urgency.

At the top of our bulletin I have quoted my Grandmother Minnie who, at her 100^th birthday party, told me: "I never expected to get here but, now that I have, it sure didn’t take long." I am only 57 years old but I can tell you that life is moving increasingly fast for me--exponentially fast. Actuarially speaking, I passed the half way mark through life a long time ago and, when I did, it changed my perspective on things. No longer did I say, "I am going to do this and then I am going to do that and eventually I am going to do it all." No, I now understand that my time is limited and I have to prioritize what is important because I am not going to have near enough time to do it all even if I live to 104 as did Grandma Minnie—even if I live to 114 as did the oldest person in the world who died on May 4.

Indeed between here and there are what my Mom calls "the slowdown years" when some of the things we wanted to do we cannot do. Already there are some things I used to do that I can no longer do—staying up all night horsing around and then going to work is one of them. I wonder what I won’t be able to do in 10 years that I can do today—or 20 years? Maybe I should rethink that big garden I put in. Maybe I should think about where the kids will end up living with my grandkids before I tie myself down taking care of chickens. Maybe I should start taking "the long look" before making decisions.

There is wisdom in taking the long look. There is wisdom in the urgency Jesus is imparting. There is wisdom in numbering our days. Nancy and I already have our grave plots, and we already have our monuments erected on them to remind us that our days our numbered. Indeed, on my granite monument is engraved a text from our Old Testament lesson for this morning: Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12).

When we don’t number our days aright—when we think our days are innumerable—what’s the big deal about wasting one or two or more? If we’ve got an unlimited supply of water we will throw it on the ground—we will water the lawn with it. But if we only have a couple gallons of water to last us the rest of this month, we would give everything we own, if necessary, to get another gallon before this month is done. That is how precious the water we thrown on the ground can become when the supply becomes limited.

When we are young, we think we are going to live forever. We take risks. We sometimes live foolishly. When we get older, we eventually realize that we are not going to live forever. We understand that our days are limited. We realize that each day is a precious gift—much too precious to be wasted or squandered. In short, we gain a heart of wisdom to make the most of each day so that we will not arrive at the end our measure of days upon the earth with any cause for regret.

I can hardly imagine any greater regret than to approach the end of life with the brutal realization that I have been given this precious gift of life and wasted it—that my life could have been so much more had I entrusted myself to God’s plan for me. Jesus wants to spare us of that hellish experience. He is using the closing words of the Bible to create a sense of urgency with us. "The end is near. I am coming soon. If you cannot accept the gift of life here, how can you accept it hereafter?"

Folks, what is past is past. We cannot go back and reclaim the days and weeks and months and years that we may have wasted. But as long as there is today, we can accept the gift of life God holds out for us—making the most of every day as if it were our last. And even if it is our last day upon the earth, let it be for us as it was for a criminal who entrusted his life to Jesus while hanging on a cross next to him and who heard from Jesus those words we shall all hope to hear at the last hour: "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43).

But let us not tempt fate, for we do not know the day and hour when our Lord will come. One thing is certain, Jesus is coming soon.