[Note: Our guest contributor, Terry James, has written or co-authored numerous books on Bible prophecy. He is a member of the Pre-Trib Research Center Study Group and the General Editor of Rapture Ready.]
Fear is on the rise in America and around the world at the moment. The fear coming upon humankind is like the nervous milling-about that stirs within the wildebeests of the Serengeti just before predators set them to flight. There are many reasons this is so. However, one particular reason especially agitates that simmering fear and will lead to growing anxiety over things to come.
Before we address the most profound reason for fear of things to come, let’s look at the many other causes that make fear levels rise across the nation and the world. Those causes involve myriad issues and events. We and others who consider our times in light of Bible prophecy continually attempt to analyze those matters and present our findings to anyone and everyone who will stop, look, and listen.
Real-World Challenges
For the masses of humanity in third-world regions, such as vast areas of Africa, Asia, and other bleak places, the daily search for the next bite of food and swallow of water leads to ongoing panic. We see the frail bodies, the distended stomachs, the flies on the faces of those whose wide, searching eyes look to the cameras filming them for their next life-sustaining morsel.
These suffering souls aren’t often demonstrative with their fear because their circumstances have denuded them of energy and have robbed them of the ability to know how near to starvation they’ve come. The world turns a blind eye, for the most part, to the plight of these emaciated hordes. The people looking the other way too often include even those of us who are watchmen on the wall for the signals of Christ’s return.
Starvation, nonetheless, is one of the sure signs of where this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline. That millions of people are caught up in growing famine dramatically warns us that the black horse of the apocalypse will one day, perhaps soon, ride forth. But growing famine isn’t the most significant reason for the geometrically-progressing worry around the globe.
Rising Contemporary Threats
Thinking of fear burgeoning within the civilized areas of the world, let’s briefly review the more familiar causes. These involve topics we have exhaustively examined in recent days:
• Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons led to the recent war. Iran could not be allowed to possess the means to bomb Israel out of existence. Even now, a nuclear war in the Middle East looms as a realistic possibility.
• All of the Middle East is a breeding ground for terrorists, and they threaten the Western world as they set up radical Muslim enclaves within the UK and all the European Union nations, establishing Sharia law that overrules the laws of the nations that Islam invades. These radical Islamic forces unabashedly shout for the destruction of America, Israel, and anyone else who doesn’t bend the knee to Allah.
• There seems to be an unstoppable build-up toward an eventual nuclear exchange due to the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
• Millions have invaded US borders due to the Biden administration’s willful policies allowing illegals to enter. Terrorists threaten to blow up things and kill people in every part of America. New York and other major American cities and their large, densely-congregated populations are in the bullseye for attack by terrorists with possibly horrific weapons, including those that are nuclear, biological, and chemical.
• The United States of America daily experiences assaults from even some in Congress who seemingly hate America. They work incessantly at chipping away at individual rights and national sovereignty. The US Constitution is under unending assault, and the system of checks and balances is out the window.
• Congressmen and women continue to shirk their responsibility to the American people, concentrating more on their own wealth and power. We’ve witnessed a government power grab of unprecedented proportions during the previous administration.
• Morality plummets, while entertainment madness infects old and young alike, taking thoughts of preserving the republic far from the citizenry.
• US leadership in economy, diplomacy, and almost every other category is on the skids, even with the new administration’s efforts to slow the slide into oblivion. Corporate America has become a sick, dying entity—thanks to elected officials who seem intent on the government owning/running private enterprise. By their constant striving to meld the American economy with the socialist economic structures of Europe, they are destroying this nation, whether wittingly or not. By running up multi-trillion-dollar deficits, these so-called “Progressives” are giving away hope for future generations to know the prosperity of past generations of Americans.
• The neo-Babel builders herd America’s great wealth, technology, and influence toward endtimes Babylon—the long-anticipated New World Order.
• The leaders of most nations are violating, at every turn, God’s prescription for interacting with His chosen nation, Israel. The world’s diplomatic community, of course, has no idea of the prophetic ramifications of dealing treacherously with Israel, so it has no qualms about trying to force a peace that can never truly be made this side of Christ’s Second Advent.
• However, there is a sense of extreme danger that even the international community of nations feels in dealing with Israel and its enemies through their plan to force peace through dividing Israel’s land.
• Most frightening of all, from the perspective of those of us who are watching the stage being set for biblically prophetic things to come, is the fact that the Church, as a whole, is oblivious to America’s treacherous dealings with Israel. Most in this late hour, in fact, think the Church has replaced Israel as inheritor of the promises God gave to the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Today, much of the Church is both ignorant and apathetic about Bible prophecy—an attitude the Lord Jesus rebuked in Revelation 2-3.
All of the foregoing, however, doesn’t account in total for the almost-tangible fear about the future. The one, all-encompassing reason for the fear that is driving people to look anxiously at what’s ahead for themselves and their children is the spirit that pervades this generation.
It is the spirit of Antichrist.
Living in a Post-Christian Society
The world has cast God aside. This has been happening in the US since 1963, when prayer, Bible-reading, and things of a religious nature—meaning Christianity—were suppressed in public schools. Today, the crops sown in that decade are being reaped in the generation that saw American leaders assassinated, its economy bankrupted, a war that eventually took fifty thousand American lives, and a drug culture developed that continues to plague the nation.
To deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh to seek and save the lost is to invite the spirit of Antichrist to step in and fill the void. We have seen and heard the raves in the political process, with the media using words like “messiah” and “savior” to describe the type of adulation attributed to a political candidate. I am referring to the mainstream press’ adulation of Barack Obama, who proclaimed in late 2008 that, with his election, the global-warming-caused oceanic rise would begin to subside.
One day, the one called “the Beast” will step into the spotlight of end-times history to fulfill the role of that long-prophesied Man of Sin.
Because Christ is denied, fear saturates all of humankind today; it is an insanity born of Christ-rejection. It is the development of reprobate spiritual dementia in a world of people ripe for God’s judgment: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (Romans 1:28, KJV).
Heavenly Assurance
Thankfully, the Lord has, through His Holy Word, given us freedom from the spirit of fear if we, as Dr. Charles Stanley said beautifully, “Obey God, no matter what, and leave all the consequences to Him.”
God Himself put it this way: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
Jesus, God’s Son, who is the very Word (John chapter 1), tells us through the Apostle Paul: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
God wants His people—those born again (John 3) through belief in the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son—not to be fearful. He is in complete control over every circumstance, including this end-times proliferation of many crises, be they real or contrived.
God has given His Word to those who will study and embrace Heaven’s truth as their model for living to let us know we can live free of fear, even in fearful times. The following Scripture passages represent but a few of the many that assure us of this:
1. “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
2. “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you” (Psalm 56:3).
3. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).
4. “Peace is what I leave with you; it is my own peace that I give you. I do not give it as the world does. Do not be worried and upset; do not be afraid” (John 14:27).
5. “For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you. Do not be afraid, for I myself will help you,’ declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 41:13-14).
6. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18).
7. “When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul” (Psalm 94:19).
8. “But now, this is what the Lord says…. Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1).
9. “An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up” (Proverbs 12:25).
10. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).
11. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34).
12. “Humble yourselves, then, under God’s mighty hand, so that he will lift you up in his own good time. Leave all your worries with him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).
Again, there is an antidote for the madness that infects humanity in these last days: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
Jesus Christ is the cure for the converging fear-insanity infecting humanity today. Here is how to accept that cure and spend eternity in Heaven: “That if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).
