Matthew 24.1–31; Daniel 9.20–27
St James Kununurra 21st December 2025
I was twenty when Simon and Garfunkle released their album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Many of its songs were haunted by the meaninglessness of life. Embracing meaninglessness was the alternative to Christian faith. Many of my generation went for it because it offered sexual freedom. If there is no God and no absolutes, we can all do as we please.
I had gone through a period of depression, thinking life had no meaning, so the songs resonated with me. The depression eventually lifted but this spectre of a meaningless world remained. I could see nothing good in it, only despair. Tis kear that this is the way things are only lifted when I became a Christian. In one of the songs the duo sing “Silent Night,” while in the background you can hear the very soft voice of the reader of the Seven O’Clock News. His voice gets louder and louder until, at the end, the song is almost drowned out by news of President Nixon urging a continuation of the war in Vietnam. The message was clear: Don’t be fooled by this Christian stuff that somehow everything is good. The world is a messed-up place. The hippies of that time thought they could put it right. We are still waiting. Christmas and the world as it was in 1966 did not go together. And I think not much has changed in 2025.
Last Sunday we were all rocked by the attack in Sydney. Authorities say it was predictable, and they are probably right; when you crank up the rhetoric of hatred against Jews it is not to be wondered that Islamists will think they are pleasing God by launching an attack. With the invasion of Ukraine continuing, and Russia’s continued heartless bombing, with countless killings and one of the biggest displacement of people in history happening in Sudan, with jihadism still boiling in West Africa, with conflict threatening between Venezuela and the US, with the rise of China’s military and its threats against Taiwan, with Mr Putin reminding us that nuclear holocaust is still a possibility, and, significantly for Christians, the still unresolved conflict in Israel and Gaza—as the year draws to a close and we sing the Christmas songs something seems not to add up.
Listen to the angels’ announcement at Jesus’ birth:
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among men with whom he is pleased![1]
It sounds wonderful, but is it anything more than a dream? But now listen to what Jesus said less than a week before his death:
And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for thismust take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.[2]
Plainly, Jesus did not see his kingdom coming peacefully. He was about to be killed. He warned that his disciples would face persecution and the world itself would suffer many convulsions. These things must happen, he said, but the end is not yet. But why must they happen? You could answer that this is what is prophesied—we read as much in the book of Daniel. But they are prophesied because they must happen. Why? The Book of Acts makes it clear that though Jesus has died to enable men and women to be forgiven and enter the kingdom Jesus proclaimed, and although he rose from the dead to establish his kingdom in power, it is still necessary that the kingdom be peopled. The end will come when God decrees it, and Peter makes it clear that none of his chosen should be left out.[3] We should be glad that he has kept the door open long enough for us to enter in.
But it seems there is something else: God is allowing the world to live out its story. From the rebellion of our first father and mother he has let the world do its own thing. Things got so bad at one point that he destroyed it with a flood, but corruption soon reappeared and he promised not to do anything like that again until the end. So, the world continues to pursue its own path. God has not fully given it up, he continues to restrain its madness, while one by one people respond to his love and enter his kingdom. But otherwise, one day follows another, and this last Sunday of Advent is with us with its reminder of evils ahead, but also of the promise of peace on earth. But can we take this seriously?
If you talk to Muslims, they will tell you that Islam is a religion of peace. Muhammad took a lot from Christianity and Judaism when he forged a new faith for the Arabs. Among other things he took the hope of ultimate peace. What they may not tell you is that this peace is for Muslims. There is no peace for secularists and those who do not convert to Islam. The present state of the world is war.
We should consider this carefully before we dismiss it. Many Muslims are far better informed about Christianity than many Christians, and they may point out to you that the angels’ words at Jesus’ birth do not mean what many think. “Peace on earth for men with whom God is pleased” does not mean God is pleased with all people; he is pleased with some people, and for them there is ultimate peace. But he is not pleased with them because they are good, but because he is pleased to save them from their sins. Jesus himself said, “No one is good but God alone.”[4] The language of the angels is biblical (and political). His pleasure is his own sovereign pleasure, his royal will. He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy.[5] But the Bible also says, “there is no peace for the wicked.”[6] So Islam and Christianity are closer than we think at this point. What is the difference then?
Jesus’ disciples were just like today’s jihadists, they wanted Jesus to set up his kingdom by force. Once they asked him for permission to call fire from heaven to burn up a town that failed to show them hospitality. Jesus rebuked them. Once, he told a parable about a farmer who sowed a crop and found it was full of weeds. The farmworkers wanted to pull out the weeds. “No,” he said, “lest you also pull up the good plants. The good plants are the children of the kingdom, the tares are the unbelievers. Let both grow together and at the end of the age I will send angels to separate the wheat from the tares.” Islamists wants to make the separation now, and think they can make a good world by killing all the unbelievers, but of course they end up killing many of God’s chosen people. Jesus’ strategy is to leave the good and the evil together and the judgement will be at the end of the age.
What a difference that makes on the ground. Correct theology matters! In the last week the media and community leaders have gone ballistic over the Bondi Massacre and the sheer evil of killing people indiscriminately at a Jewish festival. At the risk of stirring a hornet’s nest I would make a few comments. The people who carry out attacks like this see what they are doing as good, not evil. They are doing the will of Allah. They laugh at the futile name calling of their enemies. Second, it is mistaken diagnosis to see the problem as anti-semitism; the Arab nations are themselves Semitic peoples. The Jews and the Arabs are brothers; we know that from the Bible. The issue in Gaza is more about Islam and the West than about anti-semitism, it is anti-secularism. Islam fundamentalism is not hostile towards Jews in particular, but against the secular West. Muslims should rule the world; that American infidels should be in power, especially those who do not even believe there is a God is a blasphemy. Of course, there is outrage against the Jews because of Gaza, but jihadism was alive and well before Gaza, and it will go on after the Gaza problem is settled one way or another. Radical Muslims are striving for a new world, a world in which everyone is a Muslim, or is subject to the rule of Muslim law. When Muslims rule there will be a place for Christians and Jews (“people of the Book”); Muhammad made this clear.
But as I said, Jesus teaches us that God is patient until the end; only then will every person be judged and their destiny settled. And let me add: the way Jesus peoples his kingdom is through drawing them by love. All religions do not teach love. In Mozambique I spoke to a Muslim man who had become a Christian; I asked him what it was in Christianity that drew him. “Love,” he said. “I never heard about that in Islam. His father owned a mosque.
But the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is this: will there be an end to the age? Will Jesus return to this world in glory and power? Will we ever see the kingdom of God on earth? Both Christians and Muslims believe that Jesus will return. Jews believe someone will, but not Jesus. The alternative is that the world is on a meaningless journey to destruction, which is what the secularists want us to believe.
In 1998 we were staying with friends in Oxford. It was Advent Sunday and I asked to go to church. The church they took us to was not my choice, but I was interested to find it was the church where Thomas Cranmer declared his final words of faith before they bundled his out and burned him at the stake. The preacher was a young man—he looked like a chaplain from one of the university colleges, or perhaps the curate of the church. In his sermon he explained how the modern world no longer believes in such a thing as Jesus literally coming back to the world from the clouds; that is what most of the sermon was about. Then at the end, almost apologetically, he added, “But what if it’s true? What if Jesus will return?” You could sense his uncertainty. What if it is true? Has anything happened since he made Jesus’ promise impossible to believe?
Amazing that just days from the violent death he knew was ahead of him, Jesus spoke so confidently of the future of his kingdom:
And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.[7]
The next night he was arrested and stood before the Jewish leadership. The High Priest put him on oath to say whether he was the Messiah or not.
Jesus said to him, “You have said it. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”[8]
Extraordinary words! True or false? That is the question.
There is no question what the early Christians thought. Listen to Peter addressing a crowd in Jerusalem just fifty days after his public execution.
Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs … this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed … but God raised him up, … he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Did not King David say, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain (and let us also know for sure) that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”[9]
God raised Jesus from death in part to give us proof of the reality of all Jesus taught and promised, and also to show us what he was on about with his talk of the kingdom of God. It will not be just another regime change. It will involve the resurrection of all his people and the transformation of this world of death.
So, listen to Paul arguing with the Corinthian revisionists:
Jesus was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all he appeared also to me. So in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
As Christmas is upon us, make up your mind whether you think this is fantasy or reality. Or, if you just don’t know, make up your mind that in the year ahead you will investigate and find out. It is not a matter of blind faith. Jesus lived, and did things, and said things—said things about the future—about our future—and died, and appeared alive to his followers. Things since have turned out just as he said, and wonder of wonders the gospel of the kingdom has been preached in the whole world. The world is no longer a meaningless place when you know that its Creator has appeared, and is alive, and promises eternal life to those who believe in him, and is leading the world to a good future.
[1] Luke 2.14.
[2] Matthew 24.6–8.
[3] 2 Peter 3.
[4] Luke 18.19.
[5] Romans 9.18.
[6] Isaiah 57.21.
[7] Matthew 24.14.
[8] Matthew 26.64.
[9] Acts 2.22–36.