09/04/2026
Check out a chapter called "How Did We Get Here?" from my upcoming book, Leaving Fear Behind.
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For most of my life in the church, I have watched a quiet tension unfold, where truths meant to bring peace have often been received in ways that produce fear.
I grew up in the church and have been involved in it for most of my 46 years on this planet. More than two decades of that time were spent serving in various leadership roles.
While many things within the church have evolved and taken on new expressions over the years, one reality has remained consistent: truths that should inspire hope have often been mediated through fear, at least within the circles I’ve been a part of.
Historically, this tension is not new. From the early centuries of the church to more modern expressions of evangelicalism, seasons of theological clarity have often been followed by seasons where fear-based interpretations took root.
Personally, I can identify three areas where this tendency most often appears:
• The nature of God
• The afterlife
• The end times
It shouldn’t be this way. These subjects, and really every aspect of the gospel, ought to produce a deep and abiding sense of peace, joy, and hope. The New Testament consistently frames the “good news” (euangelion) not as a message of impending dread, but as a royal announcement of victory, reconciliation, and restored union. Because of this, I’ve devoted much of my life to helping people see and experience the goodness of God, while also confronting ideas rooted in fear.
Simply put, I am convinced that we will never truly understand the nature of the Father, Son, and Spirit—who is love (agapē)—as long as we cling to concepts that provoke fear rather than reveal his goodness. This is why John, often called the “disciple of love,” writes: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.” (1 John 4:18 NASB)
John’s language is striking. The word he uses for “fear” is phobos, which often carries the sense of dread or terror. More importantly, he ties fear directly to kolasis, a term that speaks of punishment. In other words, the kind of fear John is confronting is not reverence (in its positive sense), but the expectation of punishment. And according to John, that expectation is incompatible with perfected love.
Even more profound is his statement “as He is, so also are we in this world.” The verb “is” (present tense) locates this reality not in a distant future, but in a present participation. Whatever we believe about the “day of judgment” must be interpreted through this lens of union, not separation; confidence, not terror.
I would never claim to be an expert on overcoming fear, but I no longer wish to tolerate it. Instead, I’m learning to acknowledge it, question it, and hold it up in the light of Jesus—the one who perfectly reveals the Father (see John 1:18; Hebrews 1:3).
I’ve often said, “If we come into something by way of fear, we will have to sustain it through fear.” For that reason, we must be willing to challenge anything that produces shame and paranoia, the natural offspring of fear. We must ask the hard questions that expose the assumptions we’ve carried about God—questions that force us to examine why we sometimes imagine him as vengeful, disappointed, or distant, so unlike the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Some of the questions I return to are:
If God has not given us a spirit of fear, timidity, or cowardice, why should we tolerate any of its devices?
If something I believe consistently produces fear or timidity in my heart, can it truly be from him?
And when it comes to the end times, many of us carry memories that reveal just how deeply fear shaped our expectations. Perhaps you remember being afraid of being “left behind” in the rapture. Maybe you imagined looking up one day to see airplanes falling from the sky while you were left behind to fend for yourself. For many believers, the “last days” were presented as something to fear rather than something to anticipate.
It’s worth noting that the New Testament phrase “last days” (eschatais hēmerais) is often used by the apostles to describe their present reality, not merely a distant, end-of-world scenario (see Acts 2:17; Hebrews 1:2). Yet in many modern contexts, it has been almost reframed exclusively as a future catastrophe. This framing raises an honest question about how many of us were formed by that kind of teaching:
Did you find yourself preoccupied with signs of trouble in the world, rather than discovering Christ within your own soul?
Sadly, I can personally answer yes to that kind of experience.
For years, I lived with a fear-driven view of the last days. I remember imagining myself coming home to find the house empty, convinced that my parents had been raptured while I had been left behind to endure the great tribulation. I genuinely believed we were living in the final days, largely because that message was so frequently emphasized in church.
That sense of urgency was further shaped by the lingering influence of earlier generations, where expectation of an imminent rapture had deeply saturated the theological imagination. Cultural artifacts like A Thief in the Night in the 1970s and ’80s reinforced that framework, as did songs such as Larry Norman’s “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” The song painted a haunting picture of a world unraveling through war, death, scarcity, and desperation, while husbands and wives were suddenly separated and people vanished without warning. Underneath it all was the fear-laden message that once Christ returned, the opportunity to reconsider had passed and those who remained had been “left behind.”
As a result of these pressing influences, my attention became fixed on the chaos around me rather than the glorious hope within me. I became more preoccupied with not missing the rapture than with living out the great commandment of loving God and loving my neighbor. Having grown up in the church, I suspect many believers have wrestled with fears similar to the ones I once carried. Today, however, when it comes to embracing any theology that traffics in fear and paranoia, my answer is a firm no. Since coming to see eschatology in a new and hope-filled light, my understanding of the nature and character of God has expanded in ways I never imagined possible. That alone would be reason enough for gratitude. But it has also awakened within me a renewed passion to share this vision with others. And that, my friends, is why I write.
Over time, I began awakening to the Father’s heart—a grace that allowed me to challenge the fear-based teachings I had long accepted, especially those concerning God’s nature. This journey led me to explore the ancient paths and theological traditions of the early church, an awakening that was as much intellectual as it was spiritual.
What I discovered was striking: the pessimistic, fear-driven view of the end times that dominated my upbringing was far less prominent in the writings of the early church fathers. Instead, they largely embraced a vision of the future that was filled with hope and victory, centered on the triumphant work of Christ reflected in the Christus Victor model of atonement. Where modern dispensationalism often magnifies dread and suspense, the early church celebrated the certainty of God’s ultimate triumph, a perspective that reshaped my understanding of eschatology and, more importantly, of the God revealed in Jesus.
WHAT DID THE EARLY CHURCH HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT?
You see, up until the 1500s, many theologians emphasized and admonished one another from the perspective of an already-established Kingdom secured through Christ’s finished work. From this victorious vantage point, the church understood its mandate as active participation in the Father’s ever-expanding Kingdom, not retreating into escapism, fear, or paranoia. Rather than anticipating inevitable defeat, they proclaimed the risen Christ as presently reigning and extending his dominion through the gospel. Within this broader framework, futurist interpretations remained a comparatively small minority position in the early centuries of the church.
This reality was reflected in the way many early Christians taught, discipled, and equipped the body of Christ for confident participation in Christ’s triumph rather than anxious speculation about the future. As Frederic William Farrar observed, “The second of these (three) schools—the Futurists—has always been numerically small, and at present may be said to be non-existent.”
This does not mean, however, that the early church held a single, uniform view of every prophetic detail. Among the early church fathers, writers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus expressed future-oriented expectations concerning antichrist, judgment, and Christ’s return. These views existed alongside other approaches, reminding us that the early church did not speak with one uniform eschatological voice.
Even with this diversity, the broader emphasis remained largely centered on Christ’s victory and the present reality of his Kingdom. It wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation that the eschatological framework began to tilt toward negativity and pessimism. During this period, Martin Luther—perhaps the most authoritative voice of the Reformation—boldly challenged the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, exposing widespread corruption and doctrinal error among its leadership. History tells us that this young, zealous reformer drafted a 95-point thesis highlighting violations of key scriptural principles. The publication of this document set in motion an unavoidable confrontation that would forever alter the course of church history.
In light of this widespread exposure, many began to perceive the established church itself as a manifestation of the antichrist system. It wasn’t long before the papal system—and the “man of lawlessness” described in 2 Thessalonians 2—were interpreted as one and the same, with the institutional church viewed as part of a larger system opposed to the Kingdom of Christ. As Gary DeMar observes: “The Reformers, almost without exception, believed that the papal system was the antichrist, with the individual popes reflecting the spiritual application of Paul’s description of the Man of Lawlessness of 2 Thessalonians 2. The papal antichrist view was written into the confessions of that era.”
In reaction to the undeniable corruption and abuses present within portions of the clergy, many believers came to identify those failures with the “man of lawlessness” described in 2 Thessalonians 2:3—an interpretation which, in my view, extends beyond Paul’s original intent. This interpretive move fused church corruption with end-time expectation, setting into motion a pattern of speculation and suspicion that continues to shape large segments of Christian eschatology to this day. As Jonathan Welton observes, “The reformation of the 1500s changed a lot of things, and unwittingly it eventually affected the end time beliefs of much of the Church.”
It was during this era, in the late sixteenth century, that the Jesuit priest Francisco Ribera published an influential commentary on the book of Revelation that interpreted many of its prophecies as awaiting future fulfillment. His work became one important expression of the futurist approach to biblical prophecy and contributed to a stream of interpretation that would receive renewed attention in later centuries.
By the early nineteenth century, futurist interpretations were receiving renewed attention among British and Irish interpreters. Samuel Roffey Maitland was among those who challenged the dominant historicist readings of his day and helped reopen discussion concerning the future fulfillment of biblical prophecy. It was within this broader nineteenth-century environment that the Anglo-Irish theologian John Nelson Darby developed a more comprehensive prophetic framework. Darby would become one of the most influential figures in the development and spread of what later became known as dispensational premillennialism.
