Deep Impact
Acts 1:11

In the late 1990’s there was a great deal of hysteria surrounding the upcoming year 2000. This crisis was boiled down to the shorthand Y2K. Our fear was that in the year 2000 our computer-driven society would collapse because we could not adjust from 19 whatever to 2000. People began to stock-pile water and rice and many other essentials. We were afraid the end was near. Preachers preached on it and the media reported it. Those final years of the 20th Century had many people afraid.

Hollywood never misses an opportunity to cash in at the box office. So as Y2K approached several movies were released addressing our worse fears. In 1998 two movies were released where the end of time was the theme. Armageddon was the more profitable of the two movies. Yet earlier in the year Deep Impact was released. Deep Impact was not just another doomsday movie, it was a movie which explored our greatest fears and our greatest hopes.

You are about to view a brief scene from the movie. A comet is heading toward earth. The US Government and other governments have know about this for a while and have been building a spacecraft to send to destroy the comet. While this has been kept secret for some time the government has had to come forward and tell the people. In fact the governments best efforts have failed. A spacecraft named “messiah” was sent to destroy the comet but failed. What you are about to see is a scene where the President, played by Morgan Freeman, is addressing the nation.

I’m not sure what the latest is on the end times. Yet one thing we can count on is someone will always be predicting we are living in the end times. Now I’m no skeptic. We may be in the end times I just don’t know. I have a difficult time trying to pick college football games I don’t think you want me predicting when the end is coming. I am fond of the G.K. Chesterton quote, “I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.”

While I like to prophesy looking in the rear view mirror there are others who always see the slow train coming. We’ve all heard about North Korea testing nuclear devices. One end times web site makes this observation. South Korea estimates North Korea has enough plutonium to make as many as seven nuclear bombs, according to a Defense Ministry report disclosed Thursday.
The communist nation is also working to make a small, lightweight nuclear warhead that can be mounted atop a ballistic missile, the ministry said in the internal assessment made public by Song Young-sun, a lawmaker from the main opposition Grand National Party.
The assessment is based on a meeting of top South Korean military officials a day after the North's Oct. 9 nuclear test. Accordingly this is a sure sign of the return of Christ.
On another front people watch technological developments and see in these advancements the work of the Beast. Here’s the evidence. It takes more than a lunch lady to run today's public school cafeterias. It takes a logistics expert.
Take Rome' Georgia’s  West End Elementary, where two classrooms of students charge into the lunchroom every five minutes, load their trays up with corn dogs, steak nuggets and fresh fruit and pile into cashier Lydia Galego's line.
Galego, though, has a new tool to help handle the rush. Each student stops at a computer in front of Galego and presses an index finger up to a reader before trotting off to a table. The student's names flash across Galego's monitor, and each of their prepaid accounts are automatically debited $1.10.
Colleges and high schools have used fingerprint scanners to stop non-students from sneaking into dining halls and gyms. Now elementary schools are joining in, hoping that biometric devices are a good way to keep lines moving and pay for meals.
Districts elsewhere in the country use finger scans to dispense medicine, take attendance, check out books in the library or ensure that bus-riding students get off at the right stop. Again this advancement cannot be interpreted simply as a time saver for the already exhausted lunch room employee it is a sure sign of impending take over by the Devil.
With this said we should not ignore the reality that the day of the Lord could happen any day or not happen for centuries.

It is unlikely that a sizeable comet could hit earth, the movies are fiction not scientism fact. Yet what fiction can portray so truthfully is that after we have done our best God is still available. This is what makes the President’s address so powerful.

We have made our plans built our rockets and still failed. Yet, God is still available. God becomes our last but best option. “May the Lord Bless You and Keep You.” The power is; what we have failed to do for ourselves or as a government, we now believe God will do. Even in our movies we confess, “we don’t know what the future holds but we know who holds the future.”
The Bible speaks regularly concerning the future. Jesus trying to reassure the disciples about their future once said to them;
“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.  There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know the way to where I am going.”
On another occasion there was concern if the followers of Jesus would be left indefinitely without the presence of Jesus. Luke offered these reassuring words that God had a plan for the future.
"Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."
Then of course there is the prophet Jeremiah’s comforting word. When disaster had struck and the people wandered about tomorrow Jeremiah offered this explanation. “I know the plans that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope.

When the Bible speaks of the future in regard to those in the Kingdom the following can be said.
First the words are reassuring. Without exception the word to those in Christ is comforting. God has taken care of the future and you are a part of it.
Second, the instructions are to be prepared. There is nothing more  we can do, we cannot predict what God will do we can only remain faithful and prepared.
Third, our calling is not to wait on the  future but to work in the present. Don’t stand there gazing into the sky, Luke writes, instead be about the work.
Sometimes I think our concern about the future has more to do with our laziness concerning the present. We are waiting on Jesus to show-up and he is waiting on us to grow-up.
Our theology of the future is a theology of hope. Christianity is a life-affirming faith. We belief God created the world, that God loves this world, and that God loved the world so much he sent his Son to redeem it. So whether it is your future at work, or the earth’s future we are in good hands. There is no need for despair or anxiety. When we look to the future we should rest easy. Use the present to honor God and God will use the future to take care of you. There is an old Irish proverb that goes, “Don’t worry about what lies ahead. Go as far as you can see, and when you get there, you can see farther.” Ironically the Irish also gave us the blessing for the future.

May the LORD bless you and keep you;
May the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious you;
May the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.

With such a Lord the future is in good hands, let us turn our attention to the present.