It all sounds rather fantastic and bizzare doesn’t it? From the OT we heard from Daniel about a “time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence,” when Michael, “the great prince, the protector of your people” will arise to deliver Israel from the destructive and oppressive clutches of the nations; and from the NT we heard Jesus telling his followers about the coming of wars and earthquakes and famines, and of something Jesus called “birth pangs.” These fantastic predictions may remind us of the startling images in the book of Revelation, where Michael, whom we met in Daniel, is mentioned again; but whereas in Daniel Michael is the deliverer of Israel, in Revelation Michael and his angels achieve a cosmic victory over the forces of evil, sin and death as they defeat a dragon and his angels, “who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12:9).

We might think that these end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios are fantastic and otherworldly—which scenarios I might add, are stock features of what we call “apocalyptic” literature from the time shortly before and shortly after Christ that reflect the hopes of Jewish and early Christian persecuted communities--but in fact, they are neither so fantastic nor so otherwordly, but they rather highlight crises we face as nations, church, and individuals. These images dramatically demonstrate that the world we have grown comfortable with is in fact passing away, and that God will create something totally new when he comes to vindicate Israel’s long struggle to remain faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Jesus’ claim to be King of the Jews, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. With Israel’s crucified Messiah the end of human suffering has arrived, the time is fulfilled, the new day has dawned, and God’s kingdom has come.

So the message is: no matter how bad things get, even though all the ways forward appear to be blocked, and disaster looms large, and terrible problems continue to abound, and life seems to be coming to an agonizing end; nevertheless, these pains and terrors are but birth pangs, the agony the end result of which is a glorious new life. It is a vision of a future that can determine how we live our faith right now in the midst of the old world that is dying and as we experience the brith pangs of the coming of something new. The worse things get, therefore, the more important it is to keep the faith, for faith usually thrives amidst hardships. As the writer of Hebrews encouraged his audience, so he encourages us: “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”

I said earlier that the crises we face that can seem like the end of the world are manifold. We face such crises as nations, as church, and as individuals.

Sadly and ironically, those fantastic apocalyptic images in the books of Daniel and Revelation, and also where they appear in other parts of the Bible, might even pale in comparison with the world wars, the famines, the depressions, the dislocations, the pograms, the purges, the persecutions, the sufferings, the witchhunts, the gulags, the lynchings, the holocausts, and the genocides that so marked the nations during the course of the 20th century, by all accounts one of the bloodiest and brutal centuries in human history.

In about 6 weeks we shall welcome him born Prince of Peace. With our eyes fixed on him we can see that all of that biblical apocalyptic imagrey is essentially pertinent and hopeful; for embedded in all that fantastic apocalyptic end-of-the-world imagery we find hope of a final end to the savagery, brutality, and violence we experience daily. Hope for the coming of God’s new creation is the basic message of Daniel’s fantastic vision of a time when the people will be delivered from their suffering; of the book of Revelation where a great multitude, i.e., those who have come out of the great ordeal of persecution and martyrdom, will stand around the throne, vindicated and praising God; and of Jesus’ warning to the diciples while they were sitting on the Mt of Olives about the “birth pangs” of the coming new age. These visions show that, despite the gathering storm clouds, the faithful God of Israel nevertheless is in control, and will see his beloved people and his good creation through to a bright and glorious new day. As Luther famously said in his powerful hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God: “Though hordes of devils fill the land all threatening to devour us, we tremble not, unmoved we stand; they cannot overpower us. Let this world’s tyrant rage; in battle we’ll engage! His might is doomed to fail; God judgment must prevail! One little word subdues him.”

One would be mistaken to think that the church offers a retreat from crisis. Far from it! The church regularly has to deal with crises of faith that challenge its integrity, witness, mission and purpose. So it always has been for the church in every time and every place. How the church lives in the world, and yet not be of the world is something it always somehow has to come to terms with. Crises come from without, as when the church is persecuted. Then the church often rises to the occasion through its resistance, faith, and its witness unto death. More often, however, crises come silently and gradually from within. These tend to be more subtle, are often attractive and appealing, and thus are all the more dangerous. Jesus warns the disciples: “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.”

It is precisely with regard to this kind of danger that Luther contrasted the black devil with the white devil. It is the white devil, who parades his virtue and righteousness--he is the real devil in Luther’s opinion. Luther writes: “[W]hen [the world] is at its best, then it is at its worst. The world is at its best in men who are religious, wise, and learned; yet in them it is actually evil twice over….This white devil, who transforms himself into an angel of light—he is the real devil” [LW 26.41-42]. Luther continues, commenting on Gal. 1:6 (“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel”): “In the spiritual area, where Satan emerges not black but white, in the guise of an angel or even of God Himself, there he puts himself forward with very sly pretense and amazing tricks. He peddles his deadly poison as the doctrine of grace, the Word of God, and the Gospel of Christ” [LW 26.49].

One modern American Lutheran has lamented that American Protestantism is infected by what he calls “neo-pagan gnosticism,” a forsaking of biblical Christianity for a kind of peculiarly American culture Protestantism that has more in common with an amorphous feel-good spirituality than with the Christianity handed down to us througout the ages by our mothers and fathers in the faith, the faith embedded in the chuch’s traditions of liturgy, theology, creeds, piety, ministry, canon, biblical interpretation, and morality. Here once again, the writer of Hebrews offers us sound advice: “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”

The last arena where crises abound is within each one of us. Each of us faces or will face at some time or other deep existential crises related to our families and relationships; our mental, physical and spiritual well being; our sense of worth; and our financial status, jobs and careers. These crises with all their very real terrors can seem like the end of the world. Christ assures us, however, that our suffering will not last for ever, and that even the end is not the end, not that is, until God speaks, for in Christ God has reserved the last word for himself; and that word will be a word of forgiveness and pardon, a word of justice for the tyrant and vindication for the oppressed, a word life for the dead and blessing for the cursed.

Let us hold fast to the hope offered to Daniel, a hope that has been and will be fulfilled in Christ: “At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered.”

-Amen-