Canned Food, Mama, and Me: On Mormonism and the End of the World
And: An Orthodox view of the end times, and why the kingdom of God is already here
This is part of an ongoing series on Mormonism and Orthodox Christianity. Some of these posts have come out of my family history—my mother spent thirty years in the LDS Church, and my ancestry goes back a century and a half beyond that. I’ve been writing about what I found when I went looking for the ancient Church.
This one starts, as many true things do, with a closet full of beans.
Our family left the Mormon religion in 1983 after my mom had spent three decades as a member (and of my ancestry, nearly a century and-a-half).
As a faithful Mormon family, we did all the things we were supposed to: Sacrament Meeting, Family Home Evening, and Family Home Storage. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints teaches that all Mormon families keep food stored in case of a long-term disaster or job loss, and has done so at least since the 1930s. They even sell food storage kits.
And this practice has always been connected to something deeper than pragmatism—it connects to Mormon eschatology. Mormon theology teaches that in the latter days, Joseph Smith would re-establish the true faith in the world that had fallen away after the time of the Apostles. That day came in the 1820s, and the Mormon scriptures teach that the Parousia (Second Coming) would shortly follow. The living saints would endure the Great Tribulation before Christ returned to reign on earth—in Missouri, which is a detail I find endlessly interesting.
You store food because the end is near and it’s going to be rough.
So we stored food.
In a video on the official LDS website, this is a matter of obedience: “We wanted to follow the commandments and get our food storage … If you want to follow the Prophet, just do it.” For the average Mormon, this is understood as a wise way to prepare for a disaster or job loss, but it is impossible to extract this “follow[ing] the commandments” from Mormon eschatology.
Mormon theology teaches that in the “latter days” of world history, Joseph Smith would re-establish the true faith in the world that had fallen away after the time of the Apostles. That day apparently came in the 1820s, and the Mormon scriptures teach that the Second Coming would shortly follow: “[Christ] will reign till he descends on the earth to put all enemies under his feet, which time is nigh at hand.”
Being premillennial, the LDS teach that Jesus will return to earth to install his own earthly rule (in Missouri)—but not before the Great Tribulation of the Apocalypse and the scarier portions of the Olivet Discourse come tearing through the earth with a vengeance. Living “saints” would have to endure such things, should they be unfortunate enough to make it that far into history. It is not surprising, then, that disaster preparedness would be a preoccupation of people who expect to be the last generation on earth.
When we left Mormonism and became evangelicals—a huge shift in most ways, but when it comes to the end times, this was not a large shift, really. We were taught a dispensational premillennial understanding of the end-times as evangelicals. Yes, Mormonism is premillennial, but there was one key difference: we believed in a pre-tribulational rapture. Before anything truly catastrophic happened on the prophetic timetable, Jesus would return and escort Christian believers to heaven so they would not have to endure the pains of the Great Tribulation.
The disaster preparedness may have been pragmatic, but we fully expected to be whisked away before the Tribulation, and so our stored surplus food was rendered unnecessary.
So for several years, we worked on eating through the Family Home Storage. The storage closet contained many of my toys—I was in the single digits—so when we weren’t eating the cooked beans, I was pretending the beans were quicksand and sinking my GI Joes in them. Our end-times theology didn’t change much. But our attitude toward it had.
Years later, I came to understand eschatology differently than in my childhood. Beginning with a careful study of Scripture, and then a survey of Christian history, followed by a humbling bow to the Orthodox Church’s authority-as-teacher, I came to understand the following as the sine qua non of Orthodox eschatology.
1. Jesus Christ Is Coming Again
The most fundamental expectation of the Christian Church is that Jesus Christ will come again. No matter the martyrdoms, the heresies, or the numerical setbacks, the Church has always expected that Christ would return with finality. This is so important it is enshrined forever in the Nicene Creed, the most important and central statement of faith of the Orthodox Church: “And he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.”
But the Church also sees the coming of Christ as something we taste in the present. Every time the Church celebrates the Divine Liturgy, Jesus Christ himself comes into the midst of his people in the power of the Holy Spirit, and is received in the Holy Eucharist. This is an eschatological event—where the fullness of Christ is made present in the Eucharist and in his people.
The end is something we eat.
2. The Kingdom of God Is Now—But What Is to Come Is Beyond Belief
While Mormonism and much of popular evangelicalism anticipate an earthly reign of Christ in the future, the Orthodox Church teaches that the kingdom of God is now. The reign of Jesus Christ is a present reality (Philippians 2:9), inaugurated at the ascension of Christ into heaven, where he sits down at the right hand of God. The so-called millennial reign of Christ in Revelation is understood as a spiritual reign from heaven, with the kingdom breaking through into the here and now.
And just as our Savior taught us in the Lord’s Prayer, we are to pray that God’s kingdom come on earth—not later, but now.
This doesn’t evacuate the future of its glory. What is to come is beyond imagination. But the Church is not a bunker. It’s a beachhead.
3. The Particulars of Revelation Aren’t Particularly Important
Ambrose Bierce defined the book of Revelation thusly: “REVELATION, n. A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.”
It’s no minor factoid that the book of Revelation never appears in the liturgical readings of the Orthodox Church. We read from everything—Genesis to Job to Jonah, all the way through the New Testament’s Epistles and Gospels. But we never read from Revelation liturgically. Not because we reject it, but because Revelation was one of the most disputed books in the early Church canon—and while it is in the canon today, it remains a puzzling book. A range of opinions about its details has existed since the beginning, and various monks and individuals have proposed specific understandings of it. It is not unreasonable to suppose the book served an important purpose for its original audience and has since moved into a role testifying to the faithfulness of God through persecution and tribulation, no matter the characters at the helm of that persecution.
The train-schedule eschatology of Dispensationalism—complete with extensive wall charts—is foreign to Orthodoxy. That Christ is King, that he will come again, that he will vindicate his persecuted Church—these are the things the Orthodox Church is concerned with.
Funny, though: even though we don’t read Revelation in the services of the Orthodox Church, the services of the Orthodox Church look a lot like the book of Revelation. Revelation is a book of worship. The major elements are present at every Divine Liturgy, as we enter into the heavenly worship service mystically.
4. We Each Have Our Own Personal Eschaton to Face—and Preparedness Is Always Now
Hebrews 9:27 famously says: “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment.”
None of us is aware of when we will take our last breath. And we will answer for what we do in this life. How many millions of people have pondered an end-times scenario and instead found themselves laid in the ground without ever seeing a Great Tribulation? The average human dies an ordinary death, and we will all stand before God one day at the final judgment.
Paul writes: “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). John Chrysostom says Paul is “urging and compelling them to bestir themselves in order to lay hold of their own salvation.” Now.
We have only today. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us. We must repent now, and again, and again—until there is no “now” to repent in.
5. Yet We Paradoxically Live As If We Are Here in an Unending World
When an Orthodox Church is consecrated, it is consecrated unto the end of the world—“Keep this structure standing strong till the end of time, unshaken, and glorified in You.” We don’t set out to merely sojourn here — like we’re buying train tickets into eternity and have no interest in the present. We are pilgrims, but we still seek to establish an outpost of the kingdom of God in the present, and if possible, one that will last until the Second Coming of Christ.
Part and parcel of living now is the desire to see God’s kingdom manifest now. Chrysostom comments on thy kingdom come:
Seest thou how He hath taught us also to be modest, by making it clear that virtue is not of our endeavors only, but also of the grace from above? And again, He hath enjoined each one of us, who pray, to take upon himself the care of the whole world. For He did not at all say, ‘Thy will be done’ in me, or in us, but everywhere on the earth; so that error may be destroyed, and truth implanted, and all wickedness cast out, and virtue return, and no difference in this respect be henceforth between heaven and earth. ‘For if this come to pass,’ saith He, ‘there will be no difference between things below and above, separated as they are in nature; the earth exhibiting to us another set of angels.’
So we live, and pray, and hope that the kingdom is made visibly present now—that holiness and virtue are increased, and that the true worship of God is spread throughout the world as it is in the throne room of God.
The kingdom doesn’t descend from the outside while we store beans.
Conclusion
The canned beans are long gone. The G.I. Joes survived—until sold later in a yard sale. The closet is empty now, and the end of the world has not yet arrived.
Storing up provisions is not a bad idea, and all of us would be wise to take a cue from the Mormons in this regard. But the Orthodox Church does not obsess over end-times scenarios. As one of the most persecuted Christian groups in history, we know what it means to prepare for hard times.
But the grand testimony of the Church in her saints is that our greatest preparation for hard times is this: repentance, humility, and faith.
A young monk said to Abba Sisoes: “Abba, what should I do? I fell.”
The elder answered, “Get up.”
The monk said, “I got up and I fell again.”
The elder replied, “Get up again.”
But the young monk asked, “For how long should I get up when I fall?”
“Until your death,” answered Abba Sisoes. “For a man heads to his judgment either fallen or getting back up again.”
That’s Orthodox eschatology in one exchange. Not a wall chart. Not a food closet. Not a rapture.
The grand testimony of the Church in her saints is that our greatest preparation for hard times is simply this: just a man, getting up again.
Repentance, humility, and faith.
Note: My apologies to Thelma “Granny” Geer, author of Mormonism, Mama, & Me. The title of this piece owes her a debt.
This article has been updated. It originally was published on the now-defunct On Behalf of All blog at Ancient Faith Blogs circa 2013.