Glorious Appearing - The End Of Days Order Printed Copy
- Author: Tim Lahaye And Jerry B. Jenkins
- Size: 824KB | 170 pages
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About the Book
"Glorious Appearing - The End Of Days" is the twelfth book in the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The novel follows the believers as they band together to fight against the Antichrist during the final battle of Armageddon. Ultimately, Jesus returns to defeat evil and establish his kingdom on Earth, bringing an end to the tumultuous events of the End Times.
William Still
I recently read Dying to Live (Christian Focus, 1991), the autobiography of Scottish pastor William Still. I became interested in Still after reading his book The Work of the Pastor earlier this year.
The first half of Dying to Live tells about Still’s early years into young adulthood and his beginning in pastoral ministry. Still had an unsettled childhood. His parents were separated in his early years, and his father was an alcoholic. He was a sickly child who took refuge in music and became an accomplished pianist. He was part of the Salvation Army as a young man but then entered ministry in the Church of Scotland and served at the Gilcomston Church in his hometown of Aberdeen from 1945-1997.
The second half of the book deals with various aspects of Still’s pastoral ministry. Still was an evangelical. In his early ministry he worked with Billy Graham, Alan Redpath, and others in evangelistic events. With time, however, he moved away from what he came to call “evangelisticism” to develop a solid expositional ministry.
Still faced his fair share of hardships during the course of his ministry. When he moved away from pragmatic evangelistic methods, for example, more than two hundred people stopped attending his church almost overnight. In the preface, he references Martin Luther’s observation that there are three things which make a minister: study, prayer, and afflictions. He observes, “He who is not prepared to make enemies for Christ’s sake by the faithful preaching of the Word will never make lasting friends for Christ, either” (p. 93).
He describes one particularly difficult controversy early in his ministry when he confronted a group of disgruntled elders. At the end of one Sunday service, he read a statement confronting these men, which ended, “There you sit, with your heads down, guilty men. What would you say if I named you before the whole congregation? You stand condemned before God for your contempt of the Word and of his folk.” He adds, “The moment I had finished, I walked out of the pulpit. There was no last hymn—no benediction. I went right home. It was the hardest and most shocking thing I ever had to do in Gilcomston” (p. 124). That same week seven of his elders resigned and Still was called twice before his Presbytery to answer for the controversy. Yet, he endured.
Still maintains that in light of the unpleasantness one will face in the ministry that the minister of the Word must possess one quality in particular: “…I would say that this quality is courage: guts, sheer lion-hearted bravery, clarity of mind and purpose, grit. Weaklings are no use here. They have a place in the economy of God if they are not deliberate weaklings and stunted adults as Paul writes of both to the Romans and to the Corinthians. But weaklings are no use to go out and speak prophetically to men from God and declare with all compassion, as well as with faithfulness, the truth: the divine Word that cuts across all men’s worldly plans for their lives” (p. 140).
Still was a pioneer in several areas. First, he developed a pattern of preaching and teaching systematically through books of the Bible at a time when this was rarely done. He began a ministry of “consecutive Bible teaching” starting with the book of Galatians in 1947, calling this transition from “evangelisticism to systematic exposition … probably the most significant decision in my life” (p. 191).
He was also a pioneer in simplifying and integrating the ministry of the church. After noting how youth in the church were drifting away, even after extensive involvement in the church’s children’s ministry, Still writes, “I conceived the idea of ceasing all Sunday School after beginners and Primary age (seven years) and invited parents to have their children sit with them in the family pew from the age of eight” (p. 171). He laments “the disastrous dispersion of congregations by the common practice of segregating the church family into every conceivable category of division of ages, sexes, etc.” (p. 173).
Dying to Live is a helpful and encouraging work about the life and work of the minister and is to be commended to all engaged in the call of gospel ministry. As the title indicates, Still’s essential thesis is that in order to be effective in ministry the minister must suffer a series of deaths to himself (cf. John 12:24). On this he writes:
The deaths one dies before ministry can be of long duration—it can be hours and days before we minister, before the resurrection experience of anointed preaching. And then there is another death afterwards, sometimes worse than the death before. From the moment that you stand there dead in Christ and dead to everything you are and have and ever shall be and have, every breath you breathe thereafter, every thought you think, every word you say and deed you do, must be done over the top of your own corpse or reaching over it in your preaching to others. Then it can only be Jesus that comes over and no one else. And I believe that every preacher must bear the mark of that death. Your life must be signed by the Cross, not just Christ’s cross (and there is really no other) but your cross in his Cross, your particular and unique cross that no one ever died—the cross that no one ever could die but you and you alone: your death in Christ’s death (p. 136).
single is never second best: enjoying god’s gift at midlife
Marriage is good — it was God’s idea, after all! So, why doesn’t he bring me a spouse? That question, so perplexing in our twenties and thirties, can become downright painful as the decades march us into middle age and our marital prospects diminish. After all, we know the statistics — there’s a better chance of [insert extraordinary random occurrence] than of getting married after [insert any age over 39]. “A solitary life is not his plan for us whether we get married or not.” Does that mean we over-40 singles are doomed to lives of miserable loneliness? Most definitely not. First of all, we can forget about the statistics because, ultimately, only God determines who marries and who doesn’t. If marriage is God’s plan for us, sooner or later we’re going to get married. Even more importantly, we can be sure that a solitary life is not his plan for us whether we get married or not. God has designed us to live in community, in a family of believers, and his work in our lives aims to get us there: “God settles the solitary in a home” (Psalm 68:6). The real question, therefore, isn’t whether we will wind up alone; it’s whether we’re willing for God’s provision of companionship to be something other than marriage. Do We Trust Him? Trusting God’s provision doesn’t mean, of course, that we won’t ever feel lonely. Just as there is a loneliness unique to marriage — in fact, the loneliest people I know aren’t the single ones, but those in a difficult marriage — there are aspects of loneliness unique to singleness: It’s what a young, single woman feels among friends whose conversations revolve around wedding plans. It’s what a 30-something single feels when his maturity is measured by his marital status. It’s what 40-year-olds feel when others make an erroneous link between their singleness and their sexual orientation. Singles’ loneliness is also fueled by the marital happiness we perceive (or imagine) others are enjoying. Trusting God in the midst of all this pain isn’t about looking harder for a mate or even praying for greater patience. It’s about leaning more deeply into Christ and finding in the process all the blessings of union with him — a deeper, more joy-filled union than that of any human marriage. That’s why relief from the pain of unwanted singleness begins as we ask, Do I trust God ? We won’t trust him if we don’t believe he is good in the way he governs the details of our individual lives — including our marital status. If we are single today, that is God’s goodness to us today. Singleness Showcases What Marriage Can’t As we rest in Christ and trust in the goodness of God, the loneliness of being single is transformed into an opportunity to build up the whole body of Christ. In other words, we can serve and glorify God not despite our singleness, but by virtue of it. “The loneliest people I know aren’t the single ones, but those in a difficult marriage.” As we trust God’s good plans for us, we demonstrate, both to ourselves and to the people around us, that singles aren’t to be pitied. And as we abide in Christ, we stop viewing singleness as a problem to be solved. Since there will be no marriage in heaven except the marriage between Christ and the church (Matthew 22:30; Revelation 19:7), singles are uniquely equipped to show others a preview of what heaven will be like. This is why singleness is actually a sign of hope rather than despair. We can showcase this hope to our married brothers and sisters by how we handle our singleness, and we can also display the compassion of Christ to other people who feel lonely. Part of a Greater Family As we watch our friends raise families, there is no need to feel robbed or shut out, because in the new-covenant era — our era — the family emphasis in Scripture is not mom, dad, and three kids. It’s the church family. When the biblical priority gets reversed, it hinders rather than helps the growth of God’s people. Of course, we must seek to uphold the importance of the nuclear family, but we don’t want to make an idol of it. If we consider what the apostles emphasized, we see that their focus was much more on the Great Commission, personal holiness, and growing the church family. And it is this family from which no single Christian is to be left out. Privileged Calling As singles abide in Christ, we discover, often much to our surprise, that there are unique blessings that come with being single. At a purely practical level, we have more control over our time than our married friends. (I say “more control over” to correct the mistaken view that singles always have more time in general.) And the unmarried can more readily live out their personal preferences in planning social activities, vacations, and areas of service in the church and community. Singles encourage one another and glorify God as they identify their unique blessings, willingly embrace them, and put them to good use. The best privilege of being single is far and away the enhanced opportunity for discipleship and serving Jesus. This, more than anything else — including marriage — is how God remedies loneliness. And there is a satisfaction that comes from living out these unique advantages that our married brothers and sisters can’t fully know. If we are willing — if we trust God — we will surely experience the value and rewards of singleness. “The best privilege of being single is far and away the enhanced opportunity for discipleship and serving Jesus.” As we do, we come to value our lives — not despite our singleness, but actually because  of it. Women who have rarely or never been pursued by men, or men whose pursuit of women has been rejected (once or many times), often question their worth. It is to such that Christ comes, not to shore up their self-esteem, but to drive them to find him  as their worth. As we value Christ, our own value becomes clearer, and as that happens, we discover that somewhere along the way, we’ve stopped defining our personhood and our well-being by our marital status. Singleness isn’t second best. To the contrary, it’s a privileged calling with unique blessings to enjoy and to pour out for others. Are we willing to embrace it unless or until God calls us to marriage? That’s the real question. And those who say yes will never be disappointed.
