How can I overcome my fear of the end of days?

There are many Christians who do not believe in the Lord’s second coming at all. They trust Him as their Saviour, but they do not believe what Scripture makes known to us, that a moment is coming—we believe coming very quickly—when He will take us to be with Himself for ever. There are others that, whilst they see it in Scripture, fear to face it. There are many children of believing parents, taught in the truth, who are deeply convinced in their souls that the moment is coming when the Lord shall return; they trust in Him as their Saviour, but fear to dwell upon His coming again, not understanding that it is what Scripture speaks of as “the blessed hope,”—the happy hope for each believer’s heart. They do not seem to understand that the Lord loves them so perfectly that He will never be satisfied until He has them there with Him. Oh, when our hearts drink in a little more of that love which led Him to go to Calvary’s cross, there to bear all the judgment due to us, then all fear will disappear, like the cold before the warm sunshine. Perfect love will cast out all fear. We are told fear has torment, His known love expressed at the cross will drive that away. Divine love would not leave a little bit of dread or torment in the believer’s heart. I know there is a reverent fear, but that is a very different thing to slavish fear; and when the love of Christ is known, that sort of fear disappears.

We are intensely anxious that the Christian reader should thoroughly enter into this grand and important distinction. We feel persuaded that it will have an immense effect upon all his thoughts and views and hopes of the future. It will enable him to see, without a single intervening cloud, his true prospect as a Christian. It will deliver him from all mist, vagueness, and confusion; and further, it will divest his mind of all that feeling of dread with which so many even of the Lord's dear people contemplate the future. It will teach him to look for the Saviour — the blessed Bridegroom — the everlasting Lover of his soul, and not for judgments and terror, eclipses and earthquakes, convulsions and revolutions, it will keep his spirit tranquil and happy, in the sure and certain hope of being with Jesus, ere that great and terrible day of the Lord come.

This prophecy, we may say in conclusion, is a beautiful illustration of the tender ways of the Lord. Viewing the desponding thoughts of His people, when engaged in His work, He steps in and unfolds before their eyes the certainty of the coming glory, and of their full millennial blessing. To live in God's thoughts, and in the assurance of the certainty of the accomplishment of all His purposes at the coming of Christ, is a sure antidote to all feebleness or fear.

This prophecy, we may say in conclusion, is a beautiful illustration of the tender ways of the Lord. Viewing the desponding thoughts of His people, when engaged in His work, He steps in and unfolds before their eyes the certainty of the coming glory, and of their full millennial blessing. To live in God's thoughts, and in the assurance of the certainty of the accomplishment of all His purposes at the coming of Christ, is a sure antidote to all feebleness or fear.

Micah 4. And what next? Glorious news! God takes all into His own hand. As is commonly felt and said, "Man's extremity is God's opportunity;" so it will manifestly be in the latter day. How blessed to have believed before that day! The last day to man has always the sound of death and judgment: to him no funeral note so tremendous. At others he may find fuel for pride: this is a death-knell to himself, with an indescribable dread of eternity. The present day is always what man finds his joy and his activity in. The last day presents ideas confused no doubt, and not without popular error, but so far justly it is to man ominous of divine judgment; and this he dreads, not without reason. The last day to the believer is a prospect of perfect unending joy, blessedness, light, and glory. It is the day when righteousness and truth will have the upper hand; the day when man will be most truly elevated, because God is exalted; for how can there be real order and due honour if God have not His supremacy? Is it not the basis of rights that God should have His? This is exactly what will be vindicated in the last day; and therefore when God has His just place on earth as in heaven, man will have his true dignity secured; for assuredly God's delight is in the blessing of the creature. This is what love always devises, and if able effects; it delights in the good of the object it loves; and such is the feeling of God in respect of His creatures. Consequently when He is glorified, man will have the fulness of His blessing.

The apostle's purpose in this present reference to the prophecy seems to have been less to remind them of the coming performance of Israel's millennial promise, than to settle and establish — while he did not cease to warn — their souls, by showing them in what relation the partaker of the heavenly calling stands to these prospective terrors of the Lord. "But now has He promised," etc. The imminence of that great shaking, while it stirred up watchfulness, should give the children no alarm. For the dissolution of the present things is a part of the believer's hope in Christ. It is a promise that they shall not long remain unchanged. For their continuance is but a prolongation of the reign of evil. There is no rest for us in that tranquillity. Still, solemn feelings are expected to arise in our hearts at the near prospect of the day of God. It is true that when the Lord comes nigh with clouds, and shows Himself to every eye, His brethren will be with Him in that glory. But the promises of God will yield a present blessing only to the watchful Christian. If we are not habitually living in His presence, we shall find no precious treasure in His words (Ps. 119:72).

That the evil of the last days is great is a thing I do not doubt. That the saints are in the tribulation I do not believe. Those who kept the word of Christ's patience will be kept out of the hour of trial which is about to come upon the whole habitable world, "to try them that dwell upon the earth." That those, whose portion is more or less earthly, should dread what is about to come, I understand; he who has his citizenship in heaven will not find it affected. Dread as to the future is not faith.

That day shall not overtake as a thief those who are the children of the day - the children of light; but it is because they are the children of the day. Instructed beforehand of the judgments of God, they belong to Him who is to be the Judge, and not to the world on which the judgments will fall. They wait for Him, from heaven, who has saved them by His grace, who delivers them from the wrath to come. Redeemed by His blood, He who has redeemed them is dear to them; and they wait as to glory for Him who, by His grace, has made them capable of it.

186 When the abomination is set up, then indeed the short remaining time is known at any rate in general, and one taught of God knows by the warnings we have been reading if the end is nigh, but when that is, who can say? So Noah, once warned, knew the judgment was then fast coming, but none else. Judgment came as a thief in the night. But this judgment, sudden and unexpected as it may be, will be sure and discriminative. The eye of God will discern those that are His, though in identical circumstances with those who are not. Two men may be in the same field, two women at the same mill; judgment will leave the one unscathed, and take the other. To the heart that was really watching and waiting for Him He would come as a deliverer from all the power of evil. The disciples were to watch, they knew not at what hour their Lord would come.

He next warns His disciples of the certainty and nearness of this coming. Morally, it was already near, though the entire present interval of grace has elapsed; all things have been in abeyance. At the end, the remnant will recognize the signs of the times when the fig-tree puts forth her leaves (32-35). While the nearness and the certainty of this appearing will be well known to the remnant, no date can be fixed. This serves to rebuke in a general way all foolish efforts to set a date for the Lord's coming by those who are ignorant of the elementary distinction between the rapture of the Church at the close of this present period and the appearing to which this entire prophecy refers. It would also guard the elect in that day from attempting to set an exact date for that which is known only to the Father. It will suffice for them to know that all things will go on as in the days of Noah, when suddenly the Son of Man will come. Then, some will be taken away in judgment and others left for blessing (36-41). The moral lesson of it all is, to be ready and to watch (42-44).