The threat of World War 3 was the big news that shocked us all as the new decade arrived. The year is just starting, and we just coming off of the holiday season vibe. It is not a good thing with which to start a year. Surely, it is not a good thing to start anything at all.
Well, things happened one after another, as we saw the news about the wildfires in Australia. Again, this was heartbreaking. The pictures depicting the devastation to humanity and nature brought nothing but terror to our eyes.
Also, do I need to remind everyone that global warming still exists?
Wars. Natural disaster. People turning against each other.
Because of these things, some people are asking the Christians:
Is this the end?
Are we getting closer to the edge of our existence?
What can we do to survive?
What is salvation?
It feels like the time of Noah when people had the chance to repent but ignored it. When the waters came and flooded the earth, it was too late.
Good thing for us, as of this moment, it is not yet too late. Not yet.
This is a great opportunity to share the gospel because people keep on asking. But, what I notice from them most are eyes filled with fear and uncertainty. They only want to know what will save them.
Don’t get me wrong. There are many Christians who are saved because of fear of uncertain things. We Christians ask God for help whenever there is uncertainty in our lives.
Fear drives us to where we get our comfort.
It’s just heartbreaking how other people, out of fear, just want to find some errors in our beliefs to debunk them. To declare them untrue. The tribulation will not come; the rapture was a mere fantasy.
They want to prove that Christ is a false hope to save them from a false disaster.
Fear controls us. God doesn’t want His creation to be controlled by fear.
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7, NLT)
That is why it saddens me to see other Christians making others afraid by creating videos on the Internet stating that the “End” is near without giving them any hope about this “End.”
So, let me clarify some facts to stem the tide of this contagious epidemic called fear by offering the antidote of hope.
We don’t know exactly when the rapture is going to be.
Earth doesn’t come to us with a label giving an expiration date. Although the Bible may give some signs, we cannot be sure if they are literal or symbolic ones. There are arguments about this, but as long as the Lord is not doing His work and clearly revealing to us His presence, as the Book of Revelation says, we can’t declare exactly whether what is happening right now is a sign of the end times — or just a hint of a bigger sign.
It is true that we are getting nearer and nearer to the end.
Of course we are. We are getting nearer to the end now compared to yesterday. Meaning, every second is a countdown toward it. We don’t know when, exactly, it is — and that is a good thing.
God didn’t reveal to us exactly when. He just said it will happen. Why? Maybe one of His reasons is that He knows His human creations are like lazy employees. If they knew the deadline, they would wait till the day before to do the necessary work.
Which makes the work invalid and inauthentic. By not letting us in on the deadline, He is making it necessary for us to prepare for it every minute of our lives. That is why not knowing the exact deadline is good, because our deadline is the “Now” that is given to us.
We must act now.
The prophecies are meant to provide hope, not to scare people into Christianity. They act as a warning, not a fear factor card. Although sometimes it helps us to share the gospel, fear is not a good emotion to elicit when inviting people to learn about this belief.
I’ve experienced it. Many people are asking me about salvation because they hear about calamities and wars. So, I share the gospel with them.
But, fear doesn’t sustain them, as their enthusiasm for the subject dies when the news about the ‘end of the world’ dies down.
The ‘end times’ topic is no bigger deal than any individual’s death. Wait! Before everyone misinterprets this…
Of course the ‘end times’ topic is a bigger deal than an individual death in terms of kill count (I apologize for sounding brutal here). After that time, no more people will need to hear the gospel because, as they may call it, it is the endgame.
What I meant is that we Christians consider every individual to be an important person because God loves them the same way He loves us. If someone dies not reaching the last days of the Earth but rather with a natural reason like an illness or an accident, it still hurts us if we haven’t had a chance to share the Gospel to that certain person. “End of the World” topic is not the only deadline for us, even just the end of one lifetime.
This the reason why — even though I believe it is a great topic to start a Christian discussion — we don’t need to scare people about the world going to come to an end. We need to consider everyday as a deadline — not because of fear but because of love.
Christ already demonstrated how to share the gospel — using love.
If God wanted us to believe out of fear, He would have come down to us with His great army of angels while holding a great sword.
But He didn’t.
He came with humility by being born in a manger and in a family of a carpenter.
He worked with perseverance as He taught many people about the truth.
He suffered death with selflessness as He was nailed on the cross.
He conquered death with the great news of a new life.
He didn’t leave us without comfort, as He gave the Holy Spirit.
Salvation was meant to be received through love, not through fear.
Love gives us comfort. When the end comes, be it our personal death or the death of the entire world, we will be comforted by the love of God.
We are saved long before we are scared.
Salvation was perfectly depicted in John 3:16 (KJV). As the Bible says:
For God so loved …
I don’t know if someone would start their Christian journey because of fear of death, nor am I judging the authenticity of such salvation. But, I believe a man like that starts to enjoy his salvation when he starts to love and forgets about his fear.
His life starts when he works for the kingdom out of love, not out of fear. His new fear, however, becomes based on the question of what if God leaves him alone….
But that will never happen.
What humanity needs now is hope. And we Christians have that in Christ. We are not to add fear, but to end fear by giving out courage — by giving out the gospel.
War is a scary thing to imagine, as well as natural disasters and global warming. Although we do not deny the fact that these are horrible things, we have the courage to face them. Because we know Jesus promised to deliver us from any storm.
We need to be courageous enough to stand up for the truth — that there is still hope for everyone. Hope that is in Christ.
The hope that saves. The hope that encourages. The hope that loves us no matter what.