I used to be a useless Christian. My bad end-times beliefs not only terrified me, but completely immobilized my spiritual life. Bible classes at my private school encouraged our imaginations to run wild, and what started out as a pre-teen fascination and curiosity in Biblical prophecy soon turned into an intense phobia.
Youth-group films that illustrated our bizarre ideas only inflated our fears. Our teachers never applied systematic theology; in fact, we never even opened a Bible. Just pure scare tactics from the good ol’ Fire and Life Insurance Agency. For me this turned into a life altering fear.
Fear ruled my life
I never dreamed fear could grow roots like it did. By the time I was a teenager I was afraid to listen to the news or read the newspaper for fear that I would see more “signs” of the “end.” I became afraid of technology. I was afraid of barcodes (I was told these were the mark of the beast).
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Are you still growing spiritually?: Check your compass and let God lead you
I couldn’t watch movies that were “futuristic” or apocalyptic in nature. I became so fearful that I had a hard time enjoying life at all. Sunny days were gloomy to me as everything reminded me of my impending doom. This fear was a weed and the roots had grown so long and deep that they became entangled in every part of my life. When I tried to pull it out, it would break and grow back later.
I was aware of what an eschatological belief could do. A lot of other Christians I knew weren’t as afraid as me—some of them believed in the rapture. They welcomed the bad news and rejoiced in the evil condition of the world because it meant that we would get whipped out of here faster. However, my church taught that Christians were most likely going to go through this terrifying “tribulation” where we would deal with the persecution of “the Antichrist” and most of us would wind up dead or wishing we were.
What about my kids?
By the time I got married I was finally starting to vocalize this fear. A year later when we had our first child and brought him home from the hospital I should have felt pure joy. Instead I felt tremendous guilt and sorrow. How could we be so cruel as to have a child who would have to endure this future tribulation?
The world was so evil and it would only get worse. If the rapture wasn’t real our poor child would have to deal with the Antichrist. I was a brand new mom and felt as though I had already failed. This might sound silly to some, but it was very real for me.
I was pregnant with our second child when I was given two books that changed my life: Last Days Madness: Obsession of the Modern Church
I read on and slowly one chain broke after another. I can honestly say as a lifelong Christian I had never been free until I understood eschatology (the study of “last things”) in its proper form. With so many years of thinking “the end” was in my future I had developed some real triggers, some that I still deal with today but am able to neutralize almost immediately by applying proper hermeneutics.
The other aspect that was imperative to my becoming free was my understanding of Christ’s authority now and the spiritual and practical implications of that. What kind of wimpy Jesus was I serving all this time? I began to study about the dominion covenant and the significance of scriptures like Daniel 2 and what that meant for all Christians and future generations. What should we expect in the future? Why build anything? Why have children? Why get involved in things like politics, education and anything else in the “world”?
Things started to make a lot of sense when I realized that I had been reading John 3:16 as though it said “For God so loved the sinner that He gave his one and only Son.…” No, God so loved the kosmos: all of his creation. His plan of redemption includes the entire created order. Romans 8:19-22 says that “all of creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed”. Until God’s stewards welcome Christ, and apply his laws and principles into every sphere of life, the kosmos will continue to groan as Romans describes.
My very patient husband witnessed this transformation in my life and it inspired him to seek truth in these matters as well. He didn’t have the dramatic spiritual past that I did, but seeing the results of my transformation prompted him to gain a proper understanding too. Wow—as a wife, I can say that made a real man out of him. A victorious eschatology has changed this family forever.
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I have not read the books the author noted, but I did look at the Amazon.com reviews. If you believe in the tradition of the rapture of the church, they may not comfort you. They espouse what is called a preterist viewpoint, that the prophecies contained in the book of Revelation have already come to pass. Any time that there are grave challenges in the world, wars and dictators and terrorists like we have now, it is easy to think: This is it! I’m sure that believers who witnessed first hand WWII and the rise of Hitler thought that the last days had come then, and with good reason. The truth is we don’t know, and God does not want us to live in fear. And we could also get hit by a bus tomorrow. Our job while we’re here is to love the Lord with all our strength, all our mind, all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves, to minister to the widows and orphans, and guard our mouths. When we do these things, we can be sure that whatever the situation that we can call upon the Lord in our day of trouble, whenever that may be. Fire and brimstone teaching and scaring the pants off people with end-times TV shows may bring some to Christ but they usually wind up making most people turn off the TV or avoid church.
This is a great article. As I get older I look back and get somewhat angry about what was consistently drilled into my head concerning the last days. I was always in fear and I walked a very straight life which has led to a very unsatified life. I feel so foolish now esp. looking back at my teen years.