Home Christian News Russia-Ukraine War: Some Pastors Wonder About ‘End of Days’

Russia-Ukraine War: Some Pastors Wonder About ‘End of Days’

“We are seeing more things happen in real time, closer together, as the scriptures said they would be,” Laurie said. “So what should we do? We should look up. We should remember that God is in control.”

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Predictions of an imminent “end of days” have surfaced with regularity over the centuries. Pat Robertson, for example, has inaccurately predicted apocalyptic events on previous occasions.

“One of the characteristics of apocalyptic thinking is that the most recent crisis is surely the worst — this is the one that is going to trip the end times calendar,” said Dartmouth College history professor Randall Balmer.

“Now, admittedly, there may be some evidence for that, especially with Putin mumbling about nuclear weapons,” Balmer added via email. “But I also remember the urgency of the Six Day War and George H. W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War and, of course, 9/11.”

The suggestion that God is somehow using the Russia-Ukraine war to fulfill biblical prophesies troubles some Christian scholars, such as the Rev. Rodney Kennedy, a Baptist pastor in Schenectady, New York, and author of numerous books.

“This evangelical insistence of involving the sovereignty of God in the evil of Putin borders on the absurd,” Kennedy wrote recently in Baptist News.

“Rapture believers fail to understand that if they assist in bringing about world war, there will be no Superman Jesus appearing to ‘snatch’ all true believers into the safety of the clouds,” Kennedy wrote. “The rapture is an illusion; the rupture caused by Putin is a deadly reality.”

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Russell Moore, public theologian at the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, said it’s wrong to try to connect world events to end-times prophecy, noting that Jesus himself said his second coming would be unexpected and unconnected with “wars and rumors of wars.”

“It’s not consistent with the Bible and it’s harmful to the witness of the church,” said Moore, noting that the world has outlived many episodes of end-times speculation.

Moore said most Christians he’s talked with are more concerned about Ukraine’s well-being.

“I’m surprised at how little I am finding the idea that these events are direct biblical prophecy,” he said. “I’m just not seeing that in the pews.”

That’s a change from the recent past, he noted, when many evangelicals tried to interpret world events as a road map to the apocalypse – driving sales for hugely successful authors Tim LaHaye (“Left Behind”) and Hal Lindsey (“The Late Great Planet Earth”).

“It’s very rare for me to find someone under the age of 50” preoccupied with such views today, Moore said.

Jeffress said members of his congregation in Dallas are “very troubled by the atrocities being committed against the Ukrainian people and think we should push back forcefully against Putin’s aggression.”

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“However, they are not headed toward their bunkers and preparing for Armageddon — yet,” Jeffress said via email. “Most of our members understand that while the Bible prophesies the end of the world and return of Christ one day, no one has a clue when that day will be.”