When I was a kid living in Seattle we used to take car trips to Salem, OR, every so often to visit our grandparents. I have fond memories in bits and pieces of those visits in my head to this day. One part of those visits that is not so fond was the drive. It was only about four hours, but from a kid’s perspective it seems like an eternity. Typically, all four brothers would be in the back seat. When we got tired we would stretch out and sleep wherever we could find room. We didn’t have seatbelts in those days, and so sleeping on the floor, or even behind the seat in the space next to the back window was fair game. Obviously, that wouldn’t fly today. If you got caught letting your kids do that today you’d probably be arrested. If the news media got hold of it they’d portray the parents as horrible, having no concern for their children, and may even suggest they be locked up and their children removed from the home. Just recently I saw a news report about parents who don’t strap their kids into their car seat “correctly”. With all the “if you really cared for your child” talk by the news commentator you’d have thought that the violating parents were ignorant barbarians whose most intelligent sound was grunt.

It’s amazing how we change. Even more amazing is how past generations are often demonized because they did not do something that probably never entered their minds. Moderns love to impose their own scruples on past generations as though they alone have figured out truth. I see this happen in so many areas, from social issues to biblical interpretation. Sometimes I think that people who lived in days past need a break. They were them; we are us (not a great sentence, but you know what I mean).

On another note pointing toward the future, I begin teaching a class in church this Sunday on the book of Revelation. I always get a little nervous about teaching the book. It’s not because I don’t think I have a handle on the various interpretations, it’s my own interpretation that makes me nervous. I think John was describing events in his own day that he believed would lead to the coming of Christ. That didn’t happen, and as such his particular expectations were, well . . . wrong (watch for the lightening, it’s going to hit me soon!). I am fully aware that I am not supposed to say that about anything in the Bible. But it seems to me that every New Testament writer probably believed that they lived in the final days before Christ’s return. On that regard, they were all wrong. Rationalizations that try to protect John from his numerous statements regarding the nearness of the Lord’s return are just silly, IMHO (such as Mounce’s comment that “in the prophetic outlook the end is always imminent” [NICNT, p. 41]). Many godly preachers in recent generations have believed that Jesus would return in their lifetime, they too were wrong. Is that really an issue? Did that diminish their ministry? I still think there is a lot in Revelation that helps us to understand the nature of eschatology.

All of this can make some very uncomfortable, especially when you are part of a denomination that is still clinging to elements of dispensational theology. I have been assured that the class is full of well informed, free-thinking, and very nice people.