AS GREATLY TO BE DESIRED as Utopia might be, the fact is that before Utopia, we’re going to face Dystopia instead. In a Christian frame of reference, this means that before Heaven and an eternity of perfect happiness must come the rest of time here on Earth.
Beliefs in Christianity differ on the arriving Dystopia—the “time of trouble,” the “tribulation,” the last convulsions before the End of a planet that long ago became the playground of the forces of evil and their satanic leader.
Many maintain that before the worst of it, true believers will be spirited away in a “rapture” and be spared the final rage of the Roaring Lion who paces through Earth, “seeking whom he may devour.”
Others of us believe that even believers will stay put and live through the last horrific spasms of a dying world—the time the prophet Daniel foretold: “a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered.”
Bible prophecy envisions a time of unprecedented economic, social, and political turbulence—the arrival of Dystopia, which various dictionaries define as a place where—and a time when—“life is extremely bad because of deprivation or oppression or terror,” where “people lead dehumanized and fearful lives.”
A place such as George Orwell envisioned in his prescient 1984. A place of exponentially increasing violence, instability, danger, and yes, dry-mouthed fear. A place where everything seems in flux—and nothing seems solid anymore.
I’m not ready to commandeer a broadcast network and infuse alarm and panic into an already deteriorating situation. But friends and neighbors, at the very least, this is no time to be apathetic and sleepy. Because every indication is that the final drama has already begun. It’s time to be awake and aware—to NOTICE what’s happening around us and reference it to what the Bible has to say.
- When I see gas at $4 a gallon and many food prices doubling, I need to be awake to the possibility that the entire bottom could fall out of the economy we just take for granted.
- When I see the corruption of our own government, its abandonment of the Constitution, its stripping away of rights and freedoms, its willingness to be an aggressive and even torturing nation—well, I need to think carefully about where all that could lead.
- When I realize that the planet I live on is showing signs of the abuse we humans have inflicted on it, I need to stay awake to where this ends up, if we keep going without change.
- When I realize that some—even and perhaps especially Christians—wish to impose their legislated morality on everyone else, I can see how certain end-time prophecies could so easily come to pass.
- When I feel all the moorings coming loose, notice the ever-more-violent tremors of finance and society and politics and human relationships and international wars and genocides, it sometimes feels as if I’m standing on the rumbling slopes of a Mt. St. Helens about to blow.
Dystopia has begun. Reach out for something and Someone solid to brace yourself. Stay awake. This is no time for the fatal denial of the Ostrich Response.
But do not lose heart. On the other side of the Devil’s Last Dystopian Gasp IS Utopia!
Right End of the Telescope 
