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In this extract from his book published today, John Stevens talks about his own experience of doubt in himself and others. John is the National Director of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches in the UK.
I became a Christian in 1988 while I was a law student. I had grown up in a non-Christian family, and started university as a convinced atheist. I became a Christian through the witness of a number of friends from my course, who shared the good news about Jesus with me and invited me to numerous evangelistic meetings.
I resisted God’s call on my life for more than a year, but finally trusted in Christ at the beginning of my final year. Given that I had already had to overcome my scepticism and unbelief to become a Christian, I started out with a confident faith in Jesus. I was conscious of growing in faith and enjoying a new relationship with God. However, over the years I found that I had to face new doubts. I continued to struggle with sin and was frustrated by my failures. Sometimes God felt distant and I wondered whether my relationship with him was real. I discovered new theological and philosophical challenges to my faith and the truthfulness of the Bible. I felt the frustrations of seeing little fruit from my ministry and the disappointments of being let down by church and other Christians.
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When did you last have a conversation like this over coffee after church?
"Hi, how are you?"
"Not so good actually - I've spent the whole week wondering if God is even real.
How about you?"
"Hmmm... thinking that I'm not sure I'm a christian at all after this week…"
Though we often struggle to admit it, doubt comes the way of every Christian in the course of their life of faith. Doubts of various kinds can overwhelm believers of any age and stage - even those who are mature in their faith and heavily involved in Christian ministry. But we find it difficult to even admit it to others, let alone find the help we need to deal with it sensibly and productively.
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Many Christians today believe that Jesus’ second coming will happen in phases. According to this view, Jesus will first come unexpectedly and invisibly in order to gather believers out of the world, and then come again later in the visible, awesome way described here in Matthew 24. This prior coming is sometimes called the “secret rapture.” It’s secret because the world won’t see Jesus at this event and won’t have any warning of his coming. And it’s a “rapture,” which means that Christians will be “caught up” out of this world to be with Jesus. However, we should remember that “rapture” is not a word found in the Bible.
At the secret rapture, all the Christians will mysteriously vanish from the world and those who are left behind will suffer the terrible judgments and tribulations described in the book of Revelation. The period between the secret rapture and the visible return of Jesus is often referred to in this view as “the tribulation.”
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In this extract from How will the world End? Author Jeramie Rinne helps us see why this is a confusing question for many Christians, and how we can get a proper perspective on things.
Where were you when you first realized the world might end? I was a pre-teen, at home, watching television.
I happened upon a program that dramatized what the Bible said would occur in the “end times.” Terrifying images crossed the screen: warfare, natural disasters, and, of course, grainy footage of atomic mushroom clouds. I can’t remember what the show taught exactly, but I do remember that it scared me.
My next brush with the apocalypse (end of the world) came as a teenager in a church youth group. We saw a film entitled A Thief in the Night. In it an unfortunate young woman ignores her family and friends who urge her to follow Jesus. Suddenly the true believers are whisked away in a secret “rapture” up to heaven, leaving her to face the horrific global tribulation (period of suffering) of the last days. On the one hand, the film stoked my curiosity. What would it be like if millions of people disappeared all at once? But the film also made me nervous. Would I be one of the people who gets beamed up by Jesus before the world goes to pieces, or would I be left behind?
And then there was my youth leader. During a Sunday-school class he explained the biblical teaching about the end of the world using a time line. Actually, it looked more like an electrical-wiring diagram. There were arrows and boxes and symbols all mapping out a complex cascade of final events, like the rapture, the seven-year tribulation, the millennium and the white-throne judgment.
He introduced me to characters from the book of Revelation like the beast and his sidekick, the false prophet, both of whom would serve the dragon by presiding over a one-world government that somehow featured Europe, Russia and China quite prominently. This was after the beast was assassinated and then miraculously revived thee-and-a-half years into the tribulation, of course.
Like A Thief in the Night, that teaching had a contradictory effect on me. At one level, it intrigued me. It was like learning a top-secret code that suggested I could decipher the true meaning of current events. But the explanations and charts also confused me with their sheer complexity. Furthermore, how exactly did my youth leader see those things in the Bible? The book of Revelation mystified me, but somehow he could make perfectly good sense of its apocalyptic visions. And on top of it all, that sense of dread and foreboding still seemed to haunt any discussion of the world’s grand finale.
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There is no global shortage of doomsayers. We are being told that we are only decades, years, months, days away from catastrophe by global warming, ecological disaster, viral pandemics, major terrorist atrocities or a meteor strike. The scenario changes, but the end result is the same - the end of the world as we know it. So confident are these pundits that they are correct, it's a surprise that we haven't all stopped paying into our pensions years ago.
But Christians have a far more positive view of the future - one in which justice will be finally done, Jesus revealed for who he is, his persecuted people vindicated, and the re-creation of a glorious new world for those who have been saved by him.
But there remains considerable confusion among Christians about what will happen at the end of the world, and how it will come about. Not to mention the dreaded "when?" question!
We've been embarrassed by Christians claiming to know when Jesus will return. We've been bamboozled by other voices that weave complex scenarios from the Bible about how it will happen. No surprise then, that many Christians think of the end of the world, and those parts of the BIble that talk about it as "no go areas". How do we make sense of all this confusion.
We're delighted to be publishing Questions Christians Ask series. With trademark clarity and care, this little book seeks to help ordinary believers sort out fact from fiction in the end-times scenarios on offer. Author Jeramie Rinne focuses our minds on the big things about the second coming of Christ that all Christians agree on, and helpfully charts a path through the confusing landscape of different views Christians hold about the way the end will arrive.
How will the world end? is part of the Questions Christians Ask series, available to order HERE from your friendly neighbourhood Good Book website.
© Image : Michael Lehenbauer, Flickr, used under the CC license
Take a look at the slightly tongue-in-cheek trailer for Barry Cooper's new book 'Can I really trust the Bible?' part of the Questions Christians Ask series.
I was three years old when I first ran away from home. There was no trauma, no tears, I simply took out my miniature suitcase and packed it with what mattered most to me: big ted and little ted (I was not creative when it came to naming toys). Resolute in my pursuit of freedom, I went for the front door, opened it and walked down the street as fast as my little legs could carry me. I was on a bid for freedom ... It was going to be great!
It wasn't long before my distraught mother caught up with me. There were many questions in her mind but none more pressing than this: why are you running away?
My answer was simple: I'm grown up now. I want to go and live with my teddies.
I was barely capable of doing up the buckles on my t-bar sandals but I was confident that my bears and I could make it in the world without any parental guidance. Of course, I was wrong.
The folly of childhood!
Trouble is, forty-odd years later, things aren't so different...... continue reading
Praise be to the Lord,
for he has heard my cry for mercy.
The Lord is my strength and my shield;
my heart trusts in him, and he helps me.
My heart leaps for joy,
and with my song I praise him.
The Lord is the strength of his people,
a fortress of salvation for his anointed one.
Save your people and bless your inheritance;
be their shepherd and carry them for ever.
Psalm 28:6-9
In this extract his new book, published today, Barry Cooper grapples with the question of how the Bible can be culturally relevant today…
The past often embarrasses us. Looking at photos of myself growing up in the 1980s, it’s one fashion car-crash after another. It’s impossible to look away. Why didn’t people spend the entire decade pointing at each other and laughing? The reason, I suppose, is that more or less everyone was dressed the same. It seemed normal to us. We’d built up a plausibility structure of pastel t-shirts, neon socks and snow-washed jeans.
Isn’t it the same when we look at the Bible? It reflects the attitudes of a particular time and place in history. It seemed ok to everyone at the time, but now those attitudes appear regressive and embarrassing. We look back and we say to ourselves: “What were they thinking? I’m glad we know better”.... continue reading
