The latest issue of the New Oxford Review, which I read to keep up on what is happening on the traditionalist end of the Catholic spectrum, devotes six pages of its letters section to passionate exchanges about Fatima. For those who need a review of the Fatima story: in 1917, three shepherd children, ten-year-old Lucia and her younger cousins, Francisco and Jacinta, claimed to have been visited on several occasions by the Blessed Virgin, in the countryside on the outskirts of the Portuguese town where they lived.

The children reported that Mary gave them three messages: one in which she depicted the horrors of hell; a second in which she promised a world peace to be facilitated by an official church commitment to the conversion of Russia as an expression of devotion to her “Immaculate Heart.” The third message was kept secret by the Vatican for about eight decades, finally being made public in June of 2000. It was interpreted by many to feature a prophecy of the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. However, some Catholics have not been satisfied with the official version of the third message. Indeed, there are dissident groups who insist that Rome is being deceptive on the subject. The fact that Lucia, who died a few years ago after spending her adult life as a cloistered Carmelite, seemed to support the Vatican on the subject, only thickened the plot for the conspiracy theorists.

Mary Jane and I talked quite a bit about Fatima during our eighth grade year together in a town near Albany, New York. I had a mild crush on Marianne, a very smart Italian Catholic. Our romance—in so far as it was carried on outside of school activities—consisted of long bike rides interspersed by theological arguments about the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Marianne was a Fatima enthusiast, and she instructed me in the basic narrative.

I still see those discussions as some of the most interesting theological dialogues I have had on the subject of Marian devotion. For one thing, they focused much on the subject of prophecy. I regularly read the Scofield Bible in those days, which meant that I was schooled in the dispensationalist version of end-times scenario. I was intrigued with Mary Jane’s very different prophetic checklist. Because of those discussions I know better than to take seriously my Catholic theologian friends when they act puzzled about why so many evangelicals are intensely interested in revealed prophecies about the future.

These days I cannot get my Catholic theologian friends to talk about what Mary Jane and I debated then with so much energy. They seem too embarrassed about the whole thing to want to talk about it. For example, in a casual conversation a few years ago, a priest-theologian friend asked me about my summer plans. When I told him that my wife and I were planning a two-week vacation driving around Portugal, his eyes lit up. “I did a visiting lecture tour there a while back,” he said. “A great country!” After he had proceeded to tell me about some places we should not miss, I mentioned that I was hoping that we could visit Fatima. My friend responded by rolling his eyes. “I avoided that place like the plague,” he said, “and I suggest you do the same.”

My guess is that if I had pushed him to explain his desire to distance himself from the Fatima phenomenon his answer would not be unlike those of my evangelical academic colleagues when asked to comment on the Left Behind novels, or on Benny Hinn’s healing crusades. We are embarrassed by what we see as the excesses of popular movements within our own communities. But in my early adolescence my religious world was permeated with “Bible prophecy” speculations. And what fascinated me was my schoolmate’s focus on similar themes, albeit within a very different context. The Virgin Mother had given the three children secrets about what would soon come to pass in the world, my friend informed me in breathless tones. And if I wanted to be a faithful follower of Jesus today, she warned me, I had better pray that I will be on good terms with the Blessed Virgin. I in turn encouraged her to read the Book of Revelation, especially in the version that had Scofield’s notes about end-time matters. I doubt that she took my advice. I did not follow her counsel as she intended, but I have occasionally dipped into writings about the sort of Marian devotion to which my friend introduced me.

The Fatima phenomenon is not high on my theological agenda these days, although I do take special notice when I happen upon the kind of passionate discussion going on in the New Oxford Review. It is a case in point for me for a larger topic: the interest that I have—and I know I am not alone in this—in the strong religious beliefs of folks who are beyond the borders of my own religious subculture. I had some thoughts about this a while back when I read Susan Sontag’s book, Regarding the Pain of Others. It was a follow-up to her much discussed work, On Photography, in which she explored the relationship between photographic images and our understanding of the reality that they depict. In her Pain book, she focuses specifically on photographic documents of extreme violence: Brady’s photos of the dead bodies on Civil War battlefields, Nazi death camp scenes, images of Vietnamese youngsters fleeing a napalm attack and of the execution of a Viet Cong captive. She probes the ways in which we are often fascinated, in spite of ourselves, with such images, likening those experience to the fairly ordinary ways in which “images of the repulsive can also allure.” After all, she observes, we all know “that what slows down highway traffic going past a horrendous car crash is not only curiosity. It is also, for many, the wish to see something gruesome.”

Well, actually visiting Fatima—which we did in spite of my priest friend’s warning—was not exactly a gruesome experience for me. But at times it did come close.  I felt like a bit of a voyeur at the shrine, with huge crowds milling around the various booths and worship areas commemorating the appearance of the Virgin. Booth after booth sold life-size wax versions of human body parts, to be thrown into fires as a symbolic request for healing of a specific ailment.

An old woman, all dressed in black, who could hardly walk, got down to crawl on her knees, her eyes closed and hands folded in prayer, for hundreds of yards as she approached on of the many statues of the Virgin.            And yet I was fascinated to watch—not unlike the fascination involved in slowing down on the highway to witness the scene of an accident.

In a way, I am sorry to have witnessed all of that. I would rather focus on the memory of two eighth graders—one a Fatima devotee and the other a defender of the Scofield Bible—having energetic discussions together about how to understanding God’s workings in our contemporary world.

An ad in the New York Review of Books announces a film—being shown in a few major cities—with the title Paul Goodman Changed My Life. The ad describes the subject of the film as “the most influential man you’ve never heard of,” and A. O. Scott of the New York Times offers the opinion that “the time is surely right for a Goodman revival.”

I’ll reserve the term “revival” for more eternally significant matters, but I would certainly like to see some renewed attention to Goodman’s writings. I read him with great profit in the 1960s and ’70s. I regularly assigned his books Growing Up Absurd (1960) and People or Personnel (1965) as readings for my classes in social philosophy. I even went out of my way to hear him speak on a couple of occasions.

To admit that interest in Goodman’s thought requires some explaining. Goodman, who died in the early 1970s, was a self-proclaimed anarchist who was a mentor to the radical student movement; he was also very open about his active “bi-sexual” lifestyle. For all of that, though, I still claim him as one of the important influences on my own thinking as I was working through some of my own theological views.

Where he was of specific help to me was on the subject of original sin. To be sure, that was not a subject he would claim as within his scope of interests. But Goodman did have a clear sense that there was something deeply wrong with the ways in which human beings dealt with the patterns of our interaction. His “people or personnel” disjunction is a clear example. My favorite Goodman-esque example was the way libraries were run. (I say “were run” here because new technologies have dramatically transformed the way a library functions these days.) Goodman would ask the simple question: Why do we have libraries? And the simple answer was: to make it easy for people to have access to books. Library classificatory systems—the Dewey Decimal System, for example—that kind of thing was invented in order to facilitate the original reason for having libraries at all: books were placed in a prescribed order on neatly arranged shelves so that people could find them easily.

As libraries evolved, though, Goodman would argue, something perverse happened. The maintenance of neatly arranged shelves of books with assigned numbers became the real goal of the library. I heard Goodman tell the story this way. He was convinced that in the university libraries that he frequented, each morning the head librarian would give this speech to the gathered staff: “OK, folks, in a few minutes the enemy will invade, and your job is to make it as difficult as possible to disrupt the organization of this library. Once again today we must do all we can to keep those books lined up on those shelves, where they belong!”

The point was that the originally intended beneficiaries of library services, real people who wanted to read books, had become “personnel,” would-be readers who now posed a threat to the orderly library system. And I like what the example illustrates, even though I see it as unfair to the actual librarians that I know.

What I continue to find helpful in this is the way Goodman’s line of argument illuminates an understanding of the patterned behaviors of our shared sinfulness. Think, for example, of the phenomenon of legalism. Why did God command Sabbath rest? The obvious answer is that resting one day in seven is good for us as human beings. Jesus makes this point in Mark 2:27: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” But—to generalize—we often take the Law that God intends for our flourishing and we make conformity to the Law itself as the goal of the Christian life. This reverses the original design. We are seen as serving the Law, rather than as created human beings who have been given Lawful guidance from our Maker about how best to flourish in our humanness.

The title of the new Goodman film does not apply to me. Paul Goodman has not “changed my life.” But he did give me some insights that illuminate for me some enduring and regrettable features of our human condition.

My report on my visit to North Korea is at:

http://www.fuller.edu/About-Fuller/News-and-Events/News/2011/President-Mouw-Recounts-Trip-to-North-Korea.aspx

A friend told me about the time a time when, back in the 1960s, he was asked, as a recent college graduate bound for seminary studies, to address his home congregation—an all-white congregation in the Midwest—about his hopes for studying for the ministry. One thing he mentioned to the congregation was his desire to be more effective as a Christian in working for racial reconciliation, specifically between whites and blacks.

An older member of the congregation was very upset with him for bringing up the issue of race. “You don’t really know what these colored people are like,” the man told him. “I hope that seminary will cure you of these liberal ideas!”

Three years later that same congregation invited my friend to preach. In his sermon he shared with the congregation some positive experiences about racial reconciliation that he had received during an extensive student internship that he had recently served at an all-black inner city church.  Afterward, the same church member was once again critical of what he said about race relations, but this time his complaint was different: “You’re just saying all these nice things about the colored people because you have spent so much time with them. You are not capable of being objective!

My friend found this very frustrating. It is one of those “You can’t win” situations. Either your views about a group are judged to be based on inadequate experience with the group, or you are seen as having too much experience. You’re either ignorant or duped.

I have felt that same kind of frustration recently with regard to my relation to Mormonism. Having published a couple of pieces lately arguing that Mormonism is not a “cult,” I am getting two kinds of angry responses. Some folks insist that I simply do not understand Mormonism. Read Walter Martin, they say. Or watch the video The God-Makers, produced in the early 1980s by Ed Decker and Dave Hunt. Or they recommend books by ex-Mormons who have become evangelicals.

Actually, I am very familiar with all of that. It was precisely my dissatisfaction with the basic approach in that kind of thing that motivated me actually to start talking to Mormons themselves—a sustained conversation that has now been going on for almost a dozen years.

Other folks see that long-term dialogue itself as the real problem. You know them too well, these people tell me. Having spent all those hours with Mormon scholars and church leaders has dulled your ability to see things clearly. They have duped you. Now you are one of their apologists.

It’s hard for folks to dupe you over many hours in discussion with them in a twelve-year period. Those of us involved in dialogue with Mormons have not only listened to what they say to us, we have also listened to what they say to each other. Not only, for example, did Elder Jeffrey Holland, one of “the Twelve” in Salt Lake City, say to me that he believes that Mormons need to put more of a central emphasis on the atoning work of Jesus Christ, completed on the Cross of Calvary—he also has been preaching that at annual General Conferences, to tens of thousands Latter-day Saints.

“You don’t really know them” and “You know them too well” are false choices. The alternative in any relationship with people with whom we disagree on eternally important matters is to listen carefully and patiently, asking questions, discerning patterns of thought—and working diligently not to bear false witness against our neighbors!

In my childhood I associated funerals with ice cream. My dad was a pastor, and when he would conduct a funeral it meant that the next Saturday evening our family would go to O’Dowd’s Dairy, on Route 46 in Northern New Jersey.

My father officiated quite often at burial services. He had an arrangement with a few local funeral directors; if someone needed a funeral service and they had no pastor of their own, my dad would be called upon to conduct the service.

Those were the days when most funerals took place in funeral homes, usually within days of when a person died. Today we often schedule “memorial services” long after the person’s death—and long after the person has been buried or cremated—but in my youth the typical pattern was for family and friends to hold a “viewing” in a funeral home for a day or so, followed by a service in the same place.

The funeral directors always paid $25 per service and in those days that meant an enjoyable time at O’Dowd’s—we would each order their biggest sundae—with some cash left over.

O’Dowd’s is gone. It burned down in the early 1980s. When I googled the name recently, I came upon a site where folks were talking about eating places where their families went for treats in their childhoods.  Someone mentioned O’Dowd’s and someone else reported the dairy’s demise.  That was sad news. But for me it was probably all for the best.  I might have gone back sometime when I was in Northern New Jersey, only to discover that the sundaes at O’Dowd’s did not live up to my culinary memories.

I heard a pastoral theology person say recently that conducting funerals for folks who are not churchgoers is a bad idea. He saw the practice as encouraging people to “use religion” for their own purposes. That’s not the way my father saw it. Conducting those services for him was an important aspect of ministry. He had memorized long passages from the King James Bible, and most of what he did in these “guest clergy” appearances was to quote a lot of Scripture. He was convinced that when he presented these biblical passages to the unchurched, the Lord would bless what he was doing. “God’s Word will not return unto Him void,” he would say.

There were a couple of times in my childhood when a funeral did not make me think of ice cream. When two of my grandfathers died, I thought a lot about heaven and hell and the fragility of our earthly lives. That often happens when a loved one dies—and it doesn’t just happen to people of faith. Hopes and longings deeper than a desire for ice cream break through in our lives. That’s why I am glad my father saw it as important to quote Scripture at funerals where the families and friends had no other pastor of their own.

The passing of Steve Jobs is eliciting many tributes and commentaries about his cultural contributions. I followed his public role only from a great distance, but I have been an Apple person from the start, which means that I experience the blessings of his accomplishments on a daily basis.

I don’t know anything much about his fundamental convictions, but there is one line that caught my attention when it first was publicized, and it is now being quoted as an enduring piece of wisdom from his lips. In his Stanford commencement address in 2005 he told the graduates: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

That’s a very different message from the one David Brooks delivered in a commencement address he gave last spring. His point was summarized in the title that the New York Times gave it when it ran it as an op-ed in May: “It’s Not About You.” Graduates leave our institutions of higher learning, Brooks said, with “the whole baby boomer theology ringing in their ears.” Commencement speakers tell them: “Follow your passion, chart your course, march to the beat of your drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself.” All of that, Brooks argued, is “the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.”

Brooks may even have had Steve Jobs’s Stanford address in mind when he said all of that. And my own evangelical convictions square nicely with Brooks’s concerns. The Apostle Paul certainly seemed to be saying, “It’s not about me” when he wrote that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). And for many of us in the Reformed world, the Heidelberg Catechism puts it profoundly in its first question and answer: “My only comfort in life and in death” is “that I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ . . . [who] makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.”

So if I have to choose, I clearly go with Brooks rather than Jobs. But it would have been nice to be able to ask Jobs what he thought about the Brooks piece. My guess is that he would have agreed with the basic point Brooks was making, but that he also would have insisted that there is something about “not living someone else’s life” that is worth emphasizing. Both Jobs and Brooks were addressing a generation of students who make much of “authenticity”: whatever you choose, make sure that you choose it, and that you are not just going along with the crowd.

Of course, talk about “being authentic” can also be a way of following the crowd these days. But there is a biblical way of thinking about authenticity that we should be giving some attention to in the present cultural climate. We evangelicals have always insisted on the importance of a “personal decision” to follow Christ. I still like the old song: “I have decided to follow Jesus . . . Though no one join me, still I will follow.” That too is authenticity.

Bertrand Russell was an outspoken unbeliever—a self-proclaimed enemy of the faith. But he also liked to say that his grandmother’s message, written in the Bible she gave to Russell in his youth, was still a motto he wanted to live by: “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.” Russell’s grandmother was encouraging him to be authentic. The problem was that he chose the wrong path of authenticity.

Again, when the chips are down I go with Brooks. But Steve Jobs said something at Stanford that is worth discussing, especially if we want to communicate the claims of the gospel to a generation that is open to conversations about authenticity.

We have been told that John Stott passed from this life with the strains of the Messiah ringing out. I am sure that as he passed through the pearly gates an even greater chorus sang to greet him as he entered into the presence of the Messiah himself.  And here on earth we are now blessed with multitudes of tributes to this marvelous Christian leader.

I did not know John Stott well. Others certainly are better placed to offer major tributes. But the times that I did spend with him were spiritual highlights. Especially the day he hosted me for lunch.

It was the late 1980s and I was teaching a summer course at New College Berkeley. During that two week session John Stott visited the campus for a few public presentations. I attended his first talk, eager to see and hear in the flesh this man who had so influenced me through his writings. When I arrived at the lecture hall, I had a difficult time finding a seat—the place was packed. And my hope for a chance to shake his hand afterward was not to be fulfilled. Long lines of people formed to meet him and have him autograph the books folks were clasping. So I left and went back to the room where I was staying, to work on my class lecture for the next day.

About two hours later, someone knocked at my door, telling me I had a phone call. It was John Stott. He had been told that I was in attendance at his talk, and he was sorry he missed meeting me. Was there any chance, he asked, that we could have lunch together the next day? “Oh, yes!” I replied. “I would love to take you to lunch!”  No, Stott said, the lunch had to be on him. And then he identified a time when we could meet, at a New College classroom.

Before we met, I checked out a few Berkeley restaurants, fully intending to override his offer and pay for the privilege of spending some time with him. When I arrived at the appointed place, though, John Stott handed me one of two small paper bags, and led me into the empty classroom. We sat facing each other in the little desk-seats, and he prayed a blessing over the lunch he had prepared for us: baloney sandwiches, apples and orange juice. I came to see that event as a kind a eucharistic feast!

I know that the lines to meet John Stott in heaven will still be long ones when I get there. And I also know that we can’t take anything with us when we pass into the Beyond. But I am hoping somehow that the Lord will let me in with two baloney sandwiches, two apples and a carton of orange juice with two paper cups.

Michelle Cottle has a problem with the idea that God “calls” people to run for high political office. Specifically, she is convinced that Texas Governor Rick Perry has been duplicitous in telling folks that he has been seeking divine guidance about whether to run for the Republican nomination, wondering publicly about whether it “is what I’ve been called to do.”

In her Daily Beast piece on the subject, Cottle uses the Perry case to express her general concerns about making reference to a divine call about running for office. When a candidate claims not to be sure on his own whether he wants to run for office, thus expressing the hope that he will get a divine leading, there are only two options, Cottle says: either the person is a liar who is covering up a lust for power, or “the guy is nuts to even consider running,” since he really does not have the “raging fire in the belly” that it takes to run for something like the presidency—which means that no divine ego boost is going to make much of a difference.

I’m not sure what to make of all of this. I actually devote a lot of my time to encouraging people to see themselves as called by God to engage in various areas of service, whether it is producing films, selling cars, or farming in Nebraska. I believe in “callings.” And I also believe that the best way to find out about one’s calling is to talk to the Caller.  That’s pretty good Reformation theology!

Truth be told, there was a time when I struggled in my own heart with the question of whether I had a calling to continue in a full-time faculty role or to take on something very new by moving into educational administration. If I had just followed my own inclinations, I would have stuck with teaching and other scholarly pursuits. But I ended up deciding that God was calling me to move in a new direction. I can’t say that I had a “fire in my belly” for being a seminary president. But the motivation and ability to endure came as I moved into that role.

Suppose someone were to ask Michelle Cottle for counsel about a journalistic opportunity: maybe a young woman who has been doing some part-time assignments and now has the chance to move full-time into some challenging new full-time role. She is wondering how she can balance her family and work responsibilities, and she is puzzling about whether she has the fortitude to do it all. Maybe she even takes the risk of telling Michelle Cottle that she has been seeking God’s will, using the same language as Governor Perry about wanting to know whether it “is what I’ve been called to do.” Would Michelle Cottle tell her that she is either a liar or nutty—that either she already wants it and should admit that, or that she should be honest about the fact that she does not have requisite ego strength for the assignment?

I don’t think that Michelle Cottle would be cynical about the young woman’s query. My sense is that her questions are not about callings in general, but about people who talk about God’s will when it comes to seeking major power positions. And on that subject she has a point. Not that I want Rick Perry or any other Christian in the world of politics to stop praying to the Lord about important decisions that they must make. But to put all of that on public display is a dangerous thing.

Put it this way: the more power associated with a position, the more dangerous it is talk about God’s approval for what one is doing. That does not mean that persons with high positions of authority ought not to seek God’s will. But they should also recognize that it is God’s will that they also see themselves as accountable to other human beings. This accountability is always a part of our respective callings, and we should not give the impression that our decisions are really just a matter of “me and God.”

I am glad that Governor Perry and other public officials pray for divine guidance. But it is good for them to remember that more often than not those prayers, and talking about those prayers, are best conducted in the secret places.

One of the most helpful commentaries on the Casey Anthony verdict was by Marcia Clark, in a posting at The Daily Beast. Clark is no stranger to controversial jury verdicts—she was the prosecutor in O.J. Simpson’s trial for murder. In commenting on the Anthony verdict she observed that we would do well in cases of this sort to adopt the Scottish system for jury decisions. In addition to “guilty” and “not guilty” they have a “not proven” option. It is easy to understand why many people are outraged by the “not guilty” declaration in the Anthony case. But to say that the charge of murder was “not proven” beyond a reasonable doubt is a little easier to take.

The “not proven” formula is also important to keep in mind in thinking about theological issues. Shortly after reading Marcia Clark’s helpful piece, I read the very insightful dialogue, on the Christianity Today website, between Francis Chan and Mark Galli. Both of them have just published books dealing with issues raised by Rob Bell in his Love Wins. Each of them dissents from some of the things Rob says in his book, but they also talk in helpful ways about how they wrestle with many of the same questions.

What especially struck me was the fact that both Galli and Chan confessed that they have some attraction to an annihilationist view of hell—namely, the view that instead of experiencing eternal torment the damned will simply be caused by God to go out of existence. That view has itself been controversial in the Evangelical world, as John Stott found out in the late 1980s, when he endorsed annihilationism in a dialogue book he co-authored with David L. Edwards (Evangelical Essentials: A Liberal Evangelical Dialogue). Stott told me a few years after the controversy had died down that he knew he would be severely criticized when he wrote what he did, but that he made his views on the subject known because he wanted Evangelicals to realize that there are some theological subjects where we simply have to allow for significant disagreement, given the fact that the biblical passages dealing with these matters are open to more than one interpretation.

To work with a “not proven” option in theology is not to succumb to theological indifference or relativism. My own take on Casey Anthony is that she is morally responsible for some terrible acts. But I am willing to live legally with a “not proven” verdict, even while I still see her as responsible for the death of her daughter. The same holds for me on many theological issues. There are teachings that I firmly accept on the basis of my reading of the overall message of the Bible that I nonetheless concede could be seen as “not proven” by other sincere readers of the text. I will continue to argue for my own interpretations—sometimes with considerable passion. On some key issues, I think the argument hangs not on whether a specific passage in the Bible can be interpreted in various ways, but rather on whether one of those interpretations best “fits,” or best comports with, other passages, as well as with the overall consensus of the Christian tradition.

On this or that question about the afterlife—“after” both for believers and unbelievers—we need to allow for much in the area of the “not proven” category. But the basics are clear: how a person responds to the mercy that God has offered in the atoning work of Jesus Christ is a matter of eternal importance. Nothing “not proven” about that!

The recent publicity given to a failed prophecy about the Rapture brought up some memories for me about my own brief involvement in a prophecy project. I got a fairly early start in the business of prophesying about “end times.” And for me it really was a “business”—I actually earned some money at it when I was fifteen years old.

An evangelist came to town for a mini “crusade”—three evening meetings in a row—at a local church. The pastor of that church was a friend of my parents, and we attended the meetings. This evangelist—a man, I would guess in his late twenties—had two specialties that he featured at his meetings. He not only preached about “Bible prophecy,” but he could also play twelve musical instruments. He would play the piano while using his feet on a drum, and he had a set-up that allowed him to switch to a trumpet or a trombone, and also a flute and piccolo, and so on. He was rather deft at doing the whole thing without breaking his rhythm or the flow of his tunes.

We had a social time with him at the pastor’s home after that first service, and the pastor bragged me up a bit as also possessing some musical talent: I had been taking violin lessons for ten years, and often played in church. My mother immediately expanded on my credentials, informing the visiting evangelist that I could also play the baritone horn and the harmonica. This led to an invitation for me to join him in the next two services, adding three more instruments to the mix. And then, since this was the beginning of summer break from school, I was cajoled into traveling with him for the next two weeks as his paid (not much!) assistant and accompanist, doing services at a series of towns in New York and Massachusetts.

Now for the prophecy part. We would come into town where he had arranged for the use of a church sanctuary, and we would hang posters and distribute fliers for the evening service. His opening message was always the same: “Are Hitler and Roosevelt Really Dead?” He would observe that Hitler’s dead body was never seen, and that Roosevelt’s coffin, when on public display, was closed. My evangelist believed that the two of them were alive, and together somewhere in South America, plotting a “one world government.”

I think it is safe to say by now that his prophetic scenario failed to materialize. More importantly, though, his more general prophetic framework has clearly fallen apart. And it was a framework that was widely used in those days, even by folks who had no specific conspiracy theories about the continuing influence of Hitler and Roosevelt. The scheme went like this: when the Bible, in books like Ezekiel and Revelation, mentions “Gomer” it means Germany, “Meschech” is Moscow, “Gog and Magog” is a reference to Russia, and so on.

That classificatory scheme no longer applies to major scenarios in our world. I haven’t kept up on all of the new applications, but I do know that “Meschech” and “Gog and Magog” are now viewed as references to Islamic countries—with Gomer somehow slipping off the prophetic map.

Some might expect me at this point to make a few jokes about all of that, using some humor to signal that I have outgrown my brief excursion in traveling-evangelist Bible prophecy. But I don’t really disown the whole picture. I still look to the Bible for the “signs of the times.” My evangelist companion was completely off-base about the Hitler-Roosevelt scenario, but—leaving Roosevelt out of the picture—he was not wrong in identifying Hitler and his horrible machinations as a kind of “anti-Christ” presence in human history. The same for Stalin. And the same for leaders like the one who presently runs things in Iran—to say nothing of the North Korean dictatorship.

For me, the one “Bible prophecy” scenario that I take with utmost seriousness is the reference to “the lawless one” in the second chapter of Second Thessalonians. Before the coming of “the day of the Lord,” the Apostle instructs us, a special kind of “lawless rebellion will occur,” and then “the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction.” In one sense, of course, lawlessness—an open spirit of rebellion against the will of God—has been with us since the rebellion depicted in Genesis 3. But there have been special outbreaks of lawlessness in history, and my reading of the Scriptures tells me that we are moving toward a day, before the End-time, when that lawlessness will take widespread and concrete forms.

This calls for a special kind of cultural discernment. It is not our business to keep trying to identify this or that individual who might qualify for the role of “the lawless one.” Our job is to be on the constant lookout for emerging patterns of lawlessness—and this includes not only in the political or legal realm as such, but also in patterns that promote economic, moral, spiritual, and even ecclesiastical lawlessness.

That kind of cultural discernment takes, among other things, careful study. And at least some of us need to be working hard at that aspect of the task. What we are doing at Fuller Seminary qualifies, I believe, as the kind of overall cultural discernment that helps us to read “the signs of the times.” Which is why I personally long ago stopped putting up posters about traveling evangelists—and also, by the way, why I decided to concentrate on doing other things instead of practicing on my violin.