Be Not Afraid of Their Terror
This is the tenth and final chapter of a book, with the working title “Be Not Afraid of Their Terror.” The first chapter is here:
But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.
—1 Peter 3:14-17
In 2023, a clip from a sermon given two years prior by pastor John MacArthur made the rounds on Christian social media, quickly becoming the hotly debated topic of the week. MacArthur, a dispensational premillennialist, took aim at postmillennialism, the belief that Christ will return only when the majority of the world has become Christian:
Oh, guess what? We don’t win down here, we lose. You ready for that? Oh, you were a post-millennialist, you thought we were just going to go waltzing into the kingdom if you took over the world? No, we lose here—get it. It killed Jesus. It killed all the apostles. We’re all going to be persecuted. “If any man come after Me, let him”—what?—“deny himself.” Garbage of prosperity gospel. No, we don’t win down here. You ready for that? Just to clear the air, I love this clarity. We don’t win. We lose on this battlefield, but we win on the big one, the eternal one.1
The phrase, “We don’t win down here,” has become a sort of shibboleth for both sides of the argument, depending on whether it’s referenced positively or mockingly. Postmillennialist opponents claim MacArthur holds to a “theology of losing,” which fails to recognize that the Great Commission’s instruction to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) is a call to physically make nations and their governments “Christian.” Absent from the conversation are the other two major eschatological viewpoints that would tend to a more realistic, middle-ground approach,2 as is the case with most online arguments over political theology.
The truth of the matter is that, though Christians will be hated by the world until Christ returns, the church has had many victories over the last two-thousand years, not the least of which being the indisputable fact that the West is a region of the world in which we are currently allowed to live in relative peace. At the same time, the New Testament could not be clearer that a disciple is one who picks up his cross daily, not one who uses civil law to force others into that burden, even if only in a performative way that makes the Christian feel more socially comfortable. The situation on the ground has been the same since the resurrection, Christ has already won down here and will continue to win, just not in the way that our limited human minds would envision.
It’s easy to see why someone like MacArthur would come to the conclusion that we don’t win down here. He’s spent most of his life preaching the gospel in Los Angeles, a Western city that is overwhelmingly hostile to the good news of Jesus Christ. I should know, because I was born and raised there; when I was a teenager we moved to the suburb on the outskirts of the city where MacArthur’s private university is located; my high school was a three minute walk away. Even then, it wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that someone actually told me what the gospel is. From a position of pure practicality, it’s hard to blame MacArthur for his sentiment, but I see the situation wholly differently, because, from a position of pure practicality, I should have never come to Christ.
I was raised in a home that was proactively opposed to Christianity. In my entire adolescence only once did I step foot in a church, during a visit from my devout Catholic grandmother, when she insisted that I accompany her to mass. Even then, no explanation of the gospel was given. I went through the liturgy with her and she took me, unconfirmed, to participate with her in the Eucharist. If there were Christians in my life at that time, I wouldn’t know it. In places like Southern California it’s considered very rude to speak openly about your religion, especially if your religion is Christianity. In a city so dominated by the entertainment industry, where work is often on a job-by-job basis and is governed more by who you know than what you know, sharing the gospel in any social situation could cost you your livelihood. The same cannot be equally said for universalist worldviews and open hostility towards conservative Christianity.
As it was with the “elect exiles” whom Peter was writing to, when an adult living in such an environment becomes a Christian, he knows exactly what kind of social ostracization he’s getting himself into. Even though I now live in the buckle of the Bible Belt, I’m never surprised when someone is hostile to my faith, and I take no personal offense. How could I when I used to be hostile to the faith? How can I be hostile towards someone engaged in debauchery, when I came of age in a debaucherous culture and happily participated? How can I be hostile towards someone lost in drugs and alcohol when I was a pothead for years? To be pulled out of such a lifestyle only by the sheer force of the Holy Spirit and then look down my nose at those still in that situation would be sociopathic. Despite all of the cards being stacked against me (from a practical perspective), God called me to Him, adopted me into His family, and has given me the only real life possible. Let the world throw whatever is has at me, because, through Christ, I am actively winning down here, not just in the end. As Paul wrote:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
—Romans 8:35-39 (emphasis mine)
I would be a liar if I said I wasn’t afraid of what the future holds for Christians in the West, especially for my children, but I know that one of my most important callings as a Christian is to have perspective. I would rather my children die a martyr’s death than for them to abandon God’s call to pick up their cross daily (Luke 9:23), to be a servant to all (Mark 10:44) and to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44). Our generation’s greatest threat to “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3) doesn’t come from the world, it’s the internal social pressure to misinterpret hatred of our neighbors as hatred of the world. It’s mistaking hostility towards people who make us feel threatened as biblical love. It’s the rationalization of a willful rejection of the Person and self-sacrificial work of Jesus Christ, and our primary duty to emulate Him, for the worldly desire of personal peace and affluence—whether through retreatism or political aggression. We are our own worst enemies. We are the greatest of sinners.
No matter what the future brings, let us commit to always seek Christ first and foremost. Let us daily rededicate our lives to the task of demonstrating to the world that He lives in us. We will fail in this task, but He will not.
“2020 Clarity: Reflecting on God’s Goodness in the Last Year,” Grace to You, n.d., https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/GTY178/.
Eschatology is the study of the end times, and there are four major viewpoints among Christians. Put as simply as possible, dispensational premillennialism is the belief that Christ will return for a literal thousand year earthly reign before the Judgement, and that God’s Old and New Covenants are distinct, effectual “dispensations.” Historic premillennialism is similar, but without the belief in dispensations. Amillennialism is the belief that the thousand year reign of Christ detailed in Revelation 20:1-6 is symbolic, and that it signifies deceased Christians currently reigning from heaven with Christ. Postmillennialists believe that the thousand year reign is the followers of Christ gradually making earth His footstool (Psalm 110:1) until He returns. For a deeper dive into the four major eschatological views I recommend Robert G. Clouse’s The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (IVP, 1977).