Are You Prepared for the End Times?
Edna reflects on a quote from Father Gabriel of Georgia and relates it to her childhood terror of being left behind during the end times.
Photo credit: Rebekah Markewich
““In the Last Days a man will be saved by love, humility and kindness. Kindness will open the gates
of heaven; humility will lead one into heaven; a man whose heart is filled with love will see God.””
In my childhood, I was impacted by the movie A Thief in the Night, which is a quirky, very low budget Christian horror film from the 1970’s. Recently it was estimated that 300 million people have viewed this movie. It was formative for many Evangelical Christian’s view of the end times. It has a hauntingly creepy theme song which plaintively describes the horror of the apocalypse and then calmly adds, “I wish we’d all been ready.”
The movie starts a young woman wakes to find that her husband has disappeared. His electric razor lies buzzing in the sink because he was shaving when the rapture took place. He is gone and she is alone; left in a chaotic, evil world that is suddenly totalitarian with no one she can trust and apparently no chance of salvation. She wasn’t ready for the end times, so she was left behind.
Many of us who saw this as children developed a deep fear of being left behind, and our churches nurtured this fear. Gossipy conspiracy theories got mixed in with theology. My Sunday school teacher warned us to be ready because the rapture would happen in 1976. This may have been a good thing, because my fears certainly calmed down by 1977.
Just the same, I still feel slightly uneasy whenever a helicopter goes over my house because there is a scene in that movie where the girl who was left behind is being chased by a low flying helicopter while she runs on railroad tracks in her 1970’s style clothes. She can’t escape and as a child, it was the scariest thing I’d ever seen because it was presented as our future.
I recently read the above quote from Saint Gabriel of Georgia and thought, well this doesn’t sound so bad after all. Love, humility, kindness- not very end timey at all, right? However, in the context of his other writings, the end times are just as alarming as the movie, but without the rapture part. The Orthodox and the Catholic church do not teach about the rapture. There is no sudden escape for the faithful, we will endure the end times along with everyone else and they will be properly apocalyptic with the antichrist ruling the world, people getting marked to buy and sell, and all of us being watched and monitored all the time. Saint Gabriel recommends hiding in the mountains in small groups when it gets seemingly unbearable.
Most people think of storing food and weapons to prepare for the end times, and it’s wise to be ready in practical ways for hard times, but in the last days of the end times maybe Saint Gabriel is saying that what we’ll really have to rely on is what we always need most- spiritual preparation. The love, humility, and kindness of Christ that has been nurtured in our hearts will be our comfort, and it will suffice.
Lord, I’m grateful for Your love and care for us that continues until the end of this world and into the next. Help me to lay aside my fears in uncertain times and to trust in Your providence.
