Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The No. 1 challenge facing Christianity in America is fear. This also happens to be the No. 1 challenge facing America in general. Fearful people do things that are especially deadly to New Testament faith.
Fearful people search for someone to come to their rescue. This plays right into the hands of wanna-be Messiahs who aspire to power.
These villains need your fear to empower them. You’re scared? Trust me. I can help. But, in order to help you, I’ll first be requiring some things from you. (There’s nothing new under the sun. Check out 1 Samuel 8.) Christians lead the way when it comes to hoping that a politician can turn the world around, with tough talk, pagan ethics, and lots of guns.
In my experience, the most “scaredy-cat” Christians are the ones who believe God is about to come and snatch them out of the world before things get really bad. Does this make any sense? You think you’re getting a free pass out of here, that when the heat gets too hot, you’ll be rescued out of the kitchen, and yet you’re the most trembling leaf on the tree in response to every breeze of bad news. This is the doctrine of the Secret Rapture, the whisking away of God’s people that is so stealthy, even the Bible knows nothing about it.
My chaplain in the Navy, a good, Southern Baptist man, rejoiced when terrible things showed up in the headlines. Horrific things happening means we’re about to be raptured out of here, you see. He was convinced we were living in the End Times, and that apocalyptic prophecies were being fulfilled left and right before our eyes.
This was over 30 years ago. He’s still around. He’s still preaching we’re in the End Times and our super-shuttle out of here is right around the corner. I’m sure that if the Lord gives him another 40 years, he’ll still be saying that.
Multiple, successive generations of Christians, all believing, decade after decade, that we’re right at the end. And, why? Because the prophecies are being fulfilled! Yep, just like they were back in the ’80s. To reference the wisdom of the giant, Fezik, in one of my wife’s favorite movies, “You keep using that word [fulfilled]. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Fear will make you contract and shrink. Our ancestors in these parts called it “circling the wagons.” Fear makes us cling to the things we’d most hate to lose, and refuse to risk anything. Fearful people don’t invest; they cash out. They don’t build for the future: they merely want to slow the loss of what is taken from them.
Fear is 180 degrees out from what Jesus has commanded. The Gospel is not for the fearful. Cowards wind up in the lake of fire (Rev 21:8). The Great Commission is for people of valor who refuse to huddle in fear. Instead, they move forward, spoiling the enemy’s goods, and battering the gates of hell.
Where are these folks? I wish I knew, but I can tell you this: they’re not waiting around for a rapture that’s always just around the corner.
Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at: