Living in a Time of Trouble

Yesterday I wrote about the meaning of time in the Bible and particularly in the text I'm studying with you this week: Daniel 12:1-3. As Luther says about this chapter, "The twelfth chapter of Daniel . . . has to do wholly with the Antichrist god and with these last times in which we are living" (American Edition 35:313). We can be further assured that this chapter speaks about the times leading up to the end of the age in which we are living because it speaks about the promised resurrection of all from the dead when Christ returns in glory (Isaiah 26:19), a promise guaranteed by the resurrection of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:12-28).

Daniel makes it clear that we are living in "a time of trouble." The Hebrew word (tsarah) is translated in various other Bible passages as distress, affliction, anguish and tribulation. Regardless of how you translate the word the Holy Spirit makes it clear that this time of trouble is like none other before it. Therefore we must not be surprised at the intensity and the tensions of this time.

To illustrate this I invite you to read a book I've just begun by Patrick J. Buchanan,  Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War. Buchanan's premise is that Great Britain's blundering led the western world into two world wars—what he describes as the modern thirty year war—that brought about the death of scores of millions and the collapse of western civilization. Never before in the history of mankind has there been so much destruction and death. Whether you agree with Buchanan's premise, we all know that what Nazi Germany brought upon this world is trouble, horror and distress like that unknown ever before.

They who dare to claim that day by day and year by year we are evolving to an ever better and better world would do well to ponder again the events of the 20th century.