The hyper-focus on avoiding suffering
Sometimes I'm asked for insider tips. Where should I go, what should I do, etc. etc. Sometimes these questions are about avoidance of suffering.
Much of the Christian world believes that they will be raptured and thus avoid the calamities of the last days. People from a Mormon background have a very similar idea in their imaginations of how Zion will come to be. All of them are dead wrong.
The price of admission to God's kingdom is everything you have to give. If you are privileged enough to get there, you will be lucky to still have clothes on your back when you do. The sacrifice of all things is not figurative. It not merely spiritual or temporal. It is both, and it is a tiny little hole that you can only squeeze through by leaving behind everything you value that is not fully aligned with and subordinate to God.
Hopefully this establishes two truths: 1) there are no shortcuts to Zion, and 2) if you are struggling with simple things right in front of you, you should probably worry about that and not the things you don't yet understand.
Progress comes as call and response
We progress with God line upon line. All truth is successive: you can't skip steps. Like a ladder, you need to go rung by rung. I prefer to see it as monkey bars: it is possible to skip bars, but it requires flinging yourself madly into the air. If you don't have enough faith to simply put one hand in front of the other, you are kidding yourself by thinking you are going to skip ahead.
There is an obvious tendency to skip ahead of your need to repent of what you know is out of alignment with God. People love distracting themselves on what they suppose is the search for mysteries while denying God's voice to them on the evident things right in front of their face. You can't expect God to teach you more while you are in open rebellion to what he has already told you, though there is no shortage of fake messengers who will participate in the farce with you, telling you what you want to hear so that you don't feel so guilty about all the things you refuse to hear.
Progress with God comes as call and response. It's like a tennis game or a gumball machine. There is always more, but you need to return the ball or put in another quarter to keep going. There is always more to give, but it can only be given in response to what you do.
When we have a really important question, it requires sober and serious intent. Often, what we seek seems like a simple question, and it is not until later that we realize what an enormous question it was, and the appropriate cost to getting the answer.
Pro tip: End-times questions can occur singly, but tend to be answered in chunks
The end times is a single puzzle. You can't make much progress trying to solve it piecemeal, and many people make many mistakes while trying to so--typically by trying to inject the one piece they have figured out into all the remaining blanks, even when it is really obvious it doesn't fit.
If you could see the completed picture, you would see how interconnected it all is. A particular piece connects to a dozen others. A particular idea is prerequisite to understanding a bunch more. One theme echoes through a swath of the picture.
It was designed as a puzzle on purpose. It is obfuscated on purpose. God could have written something much plainer, much easier to understand. There is a reason.
The puzzle protects us from usurpers and from the accountability that comes from plainness. The last time I checked, there is a shortage of people who can say that they have ceased to sin. If you won't reconcile to your present understanding of truth, why would you expect to do better with a larger helping? The larger helping is coming, whether you are ready or not. I really, really hope all who read this prepare themselves today by reconciling today to what they know today.
When it is revealed, it will not be believed by many, because much of the puzzle includes parts that are too far from cherished but false ideas people have about many things.
In many ways, these things are similar to Jews looking for the Messiah after Jesus’ birth and before the start of his ministry. It was good to look for a Messiah, but foolish to be so sure about the details of your expectation. When he came, he did so in ways that overstretched the specific expectations of those who seem to have spent the most time studying the prophecies of his arrival. This wasn’t because studying them was bad, but because they prioritized mental trivia over spiritual purity—occupying themselves with external acts instead of learning to reconcile to God’s voice via the conscience. When Jesus came, he tried to convince them to purify their hearts, because even his obvious presence would be insufficient to convince those whose understandings were darkened by their internal rebellion against God.
The time we live in is no trivial matter. Our generation will see the fulfillment of creation, the unification of all dispensations, the physical gathering to the lands of promise, the outpouring of God’s wrath, and the return of Jesus Christ. If we want these things to be a blessing to us, we must rise up to and beyond the examples provided by the righteous ancients. We will not get there through occasional interest, typical attention, or mediocre obedience.
If we want to be as prepared as possible, we ought to focus on obeying what we already know and what additional things will be revealed before then.
Understanding the magnitude of what you are asking, what it would mean if I knew the answer, and what it would mean if I told you the answer
If we ask questions about the end times, we ought to realize the gravity of what we are asking, and bring a worthy sacrifice. After all, many very righteous men asked questions about this topic and received either nothing in return, or complex puzzles they could not understand. If we expect more, we ought to have a reason.
Suppose someone knew the answers already. Suppose they could tell you all things that are to befall you and those you care about until you die or the Lord returns. What good it would do for you? Would you then repent of all your sins? Would you then dedicate your life to the benefit of others?
Would it help you to see faults in yourself that you do not yet see, or to have greater courage to change the faults of which you already know? Is it possible you are seeking not because you want to know, but in hopes that you find something that makes you feel better in spite of the faults you know you have and do nothing to change?
The end of the world is not an event, but a process. While you are yet in your sins, you lack the faith to believe the terrible details, even if someone told you exactly what was coming. You do not gain the strength to face the relatively minuscule challenges that presently beset you by focusing on even greater challenges. You gain the strength by doing what already lies in your power, but remains undone.
Focus on what is before you, not what lies ahead of you. You have your work to do, and I have mine, and that's what we ought to focus on. Cleansing the inner vessel, and loving your neighbor more than yourself are two simple things that seem to be more than enough for most people right now.