Jane Goodall is best known to the world as the foremost expert on chimpanzees. She began her study of chimpanzees in 1960, when she was 23-years-old. She spent the next 55 years studying wild chimpanzees social and family interactions. At the age of 78, she retired from her work as a primatologist and an anthropologist.
Her new venture in life has become being an activist for climate change. Her mother taught her that the best way to change the minds of individuals is to tell stories. Goodall now travels across the globe telling stories of what she has seen of the destruction caused by climate change. She maintains that the only way to stop this devastation is for everyone to get involved. Goodall said in the interview, “My job now is to try and help people understand every one of us makes a difference. And cumulatively, wise choices in how we act each day can begin to change the world.”
To make her point clearer, she enjoys telling this story: “I mean, there was a little boy in Burundi. He was seven — a little African boy. I talked at his school. He came up to me afterward, and he said, ‘If I pick up a piece of litter every day, I’ll make a difference, won’t I?’ I said, ‘Yes. You’ll make a huge difference.’ And I said, ‘Well, suppose you persuade ten of your friends to do the same?’ He said, ‘Wow. That would really make a difference.’ And I said, ‘Then each of your ten friends could choose ten friends.’ He said, ‘Hoo — we’d change everything.’”
Goodall has a new goal. A serious goal. A goal that motivates her. That goal is to convince people and nations that climate change is real and appropriate steps must be taken to stop it. Of her new role as an activist Goodall said, “I’m traveling around the world now, no longer studying chimpanzees, and trying to tell people what’s happening in the world, the mess that we’ve made and the fact that unless we all get together to help the environment we all share, then it may be too late. The window of time is closing. And it’s not enough just to wave placards and say, ‘Climate change!’ The point is to take actual action. To do your bit.”
The window of time is closing.
The message of 2 Peter is that the window of time for the second coming is quickly closing.
There is a scholarly debate if Peter is the actual author of the letter, but it is sufficient for us to claim Peter as the author. This question brings forth another question, and that would be the year in which the letter was written. Peter was executed by the Romans in the year 68, and it is believed that he wrote this letter shortly before that.
One of the most often quoted lines from the Bible is when Peter wrote: “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” We often associate this line with unanswered prayers, a delayed healing, asking why I can’t find someone to marry, or when will God rescue me from my plight. This is just a very short list of how we have used this verse when God seems unresponsive in our lives. And, perhaps, this is a meaningful interpretation.
Though, for Peter, in the five preceding verses, informs us of his meaning for composing a standard of time for God. Peter wrote, “Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’ But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word, the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.”
Peter is saying that God is delaying the second coming desiring that as many who are willing to be saved are saved. The “slowness” will allow unbelievers to turn from their secular ways and live spiritual lives. It is the hope that they will no longer live in darkness but will come and live in the great light. The line expresses the hope that everyone will invite Jesus into their lives as Lord and Savior.
Unbelievers denied the second coming. They argued that this was a stable world in which things, since the of Jesus’ death on a cross, have remained unalterably the same. They believed since God was so slow to act that it was possible to assume that the second coming was never going to happen at all. They had no desire to change from their debauchery lifestyle.
But Peter disputes this line of thinking when he wrote, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.” God’s slowness is not a declaration that there is no God, but God’s slowness is an act of mercy hoping everyone will come to believe.
Jesus anticipated this problem among unbelievers when he said, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”
The seriousness of what Jesus spoke, and Peter wrote, should compel us to be evangelists because the window is closing.
We don’t have the privilege of waiting until tomorrow. We must act this day. This hour. This minute. We need to share our testimony and why we came to believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We must encourage individuals to invite Jesus into their lives. We must be willing to share biblical passages. We need to avoid excuse making as to why I am not qualified to be an evangelist. We need to stop pretending that we don’t know anyone who is not already a Christian. And as much as I dislike scare tactics, we must be serious in our presentation that there is a day of judgment.
Lauren Daigle is a Christian singer who has won most every award possible for her inspiring songs. A part of her evangelical mission is preforming concerts at state penitentiaries. In December 2019, she performed at the Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana. Angola is the largest maximum-security facility in the United States. Between songs Daigle offered encouraging words to the inmates. It was her desire to help them find a new direction in life. She hoped her songs and her performance would lead some of the inmates to Christ. For those who would not accept Jesus as their Savior, she hoped her songs would offer comfort.
Between one song Daigle said, “He doesn’t point a finger, he doesn’t give you shame, He sits with you. I think that’s why he’s called the Savior of the world.” To date her most popular album, which was released in September 2018, is Look Up Child. During her performance of songs from that album, she paused and said to the inmates, “The one thing that you can always do is look up. You can look up and see the sky. You can look up and see the kindness of God, and his extravagant love for each one of you.” In the song she sings when your world is in “darkness,” when your world is “crumbling,” you should, as she sings in the refrain, “Look up child.”
Amen.