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Repentance, Prayer and End Time: Christian Jargon in Crisis?

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I have witnessed how Christians respond in times of personal, local, national, or international crises. Most of the time, I came across Christians responding in the following three ways:

We Need to Repent

I have absolutely no doubt about the need for repentance in times of crisis. All the prophets and ministers come up with this message, especially in seasons of crisis. Here are my questions: When you say repent in crisis, do we imply that the crisis is the judgment from God? Can we attribute all crises to God?

Another direction in which I am concerned: Why are we preaching repentance ONLY in the context of crisis so aggressively? When everything is going fine, do we need repentance? I believe that repentance must be part of our daily devotional life before God. It is not something we need to preach and think about only in the season of crisis. Repentance is an essential part of daily Christian life.

Moreover, let us not forget that before we preach repentance to others, we need genuine repentance ourselves. Otherwise, we will be hypocrites.

Prayer

When a crisis comes, Christians are revived in prayer. My concern, again, is that a revived prayer life and increased time of intercession are not something we need to reserve only for seasons of crisis, though both are needed in difficult times.

Prayer and intercession are a way of life for a Christian and the church. The Bible encourages us to pray always. I feel that we all need to know the absolute need for prayer in our daily lives. Again, it is not seasonal, but prayer must be an integral part of our Christian walk.

End Time

Whenever a natural calamity or any uncommon development happens, there are Christians who all of a sudden come up with preaching about the second coming. Some go to extremes by predicting the date of Jesus’ coming. Most of the time, people terrify the church with their preaching and connect biblical prophecy with current events.

On most occasions, such preachers misinterpret the Bible and have a lot of errors. I do not want to discuss problems with interpretation now. My question is: Why are we preaching about the second coming only in times of crisis?

I observed the greatest difference between most modern churches and the early church is that we do not have the prayer “Maranatha,” but the early church had this prayer regularly. In fact, the first-century church believed Christ would come in their generation. That is why they preached the gospel everywhere.

Noah preached the message of judgment and hope to the world. In contrast, today's eschatological preachers would not go out and tell the message of the gospel to the world outside the church. The Christian life must be centered on the second coming of Jesus. It is not something that we occasionally preach. It should be the hope of every day.

We need to live every day with the expectation of the second coming. We need to prepare and be ready for the second coming of Jesus every second, not just occasionally. It is not a topic that we occasionally take up and bombard people with.

My aim in this article is to emphasize the need for prayer, repentance, and preparation for and expectation of the second coming of Jesus in the everyday life of a Christian. I do not intend to deny the importance of prayer, repentance, or heightened awareness of the second coming in the context of crises like COVID-19.

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