I am more or less a product of an era known as the Jesus Movement. This movement took place in the 60’s and 70’s and was made up of mostly teens and twenty-somethings who had come out of the drug and hippie culture. Then there were a few like me who were just good church kids that got tired of traditional stuck-in-the-mud religion.
Then at the same time, the hippie culture was in full swing. Think Woodstock. This culture was mostly characterized by rock-n-roll, drugs, free sex, and discontentment with “the establishment.” There were sit-ins and war protests galore. They wanted change. Much of this cry for change was legitimate.
It was at this intersection of movements that the church missed a huge opportunity to change America and the world.
In 1970 author Hal Lindsey wrote a book titled “The Late Great Planet Earth.” The book was about an event he called “the rapture” when Jesus would come in the clouds and instantly snatch his church from the ever worsening planet, taking us to heaven, and leaving the earth to suffer the wrath of God in a seven-year tribulation. And He used scripture to back it up in a very convincing way. Convincing, that is, if you have very little knowledge of the bible or church history.
I, like a lot of my peers, bought into it wholeheartedly. Our goal now was to get as many saved as we could and the sooner the better, because He could come any minute. Ok, so what has this got to do with hippies and Jesus people?
On the one hand you had the hippies who wanted to revolutionize society and on the other hand you had those who had hearts changed by Jesus. So, what happened was the new followers of Jesus went out and revolutionized society, right? Wrong. We bought into the “left behind/I wish we’d all been ready” message. Why change society? Why change government? Why go to college (unless it was bible college)? Our only mission was to get as many souls saved as possible before the rapture. Why polish brass on the Titanic?
That way of thinking caused us to compartmentalize our spirituality and spiritualize our Christianity. We were waiting for a “someday” kingdom, when all the while Jesus had told us the kingdom was at hand (Mark 1:15). Meanwhile, many of the hippies who didn’t come to Jesus went to college and became lawyers, politicians, judges, professors, etc. and became shapers and molders of society.
One of the most overlooked passages in the bible is in Isaiah 9:7 –
Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end,
Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,
To order it and establish it with judgment and justice
From that time forward, even forever.
The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.
And one of the most misappropriated scriptures is none other than John 3:16 –
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
That whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
The word “world” in this passage is the Greek word kosmos, which means the whole created order! When I began to understand that Jesus came not only to change me, but everything, my whole outlook on life started to change.
Where I once saw myself as someone waiting to be rescued from a sinking ship, I now see myself as partnering with Christ Himself in saving the world. The world is going to be saved!
I used to frequently say that it doesn’t matter what your eschatology is (I would throw that out there when I didn’t want to argue about end times). It was a cop out. It is important. With that I’ll leave you with a quote by N.T. Wright from his book Surprised by Scripture –
“When Christ shall come,” we sing in a favorite hymn, “with shout of acclamation, and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.” What we ought to sing is, “When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, and heal his world, what joy shall fill my heart.” In the New Testament the Second Coming is not the point at which Jesus snatches people up, away from the earth, to live forever with him somewhere else, but the point at which he returns to reign not only in heaven but upon the earth. After all, the risen Jesus in Matthew 28 declares that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” and makes that the basis for his commission to his disciples.
All authority.
Hmmmm….
Kevin