I don’t like heights.

Standing there at the edge of the cliff with my toes extending out over the rocky lip of the precipice made me break out into a cold sweat.

I stared down into the dark chasm, unable to tear my gaze away. I couldn’t see the bottom, but I already knew it was deep. The ground beneath me tipped one way and then the other. Waves of nausea washed over me, and my ears buzzed like incoming hornets.

Paralyzed at the edge—afraid to even breathe, a powerful urge to take a step forward seized me. It took extreme focus to stay put. With my senses ebbing away at the brink of this yawning abyss, and with no one around to pull me back, I wondered if I would survive this awful place.

No passer-by would have recognized my dilemma, for they would have seen me standing in the middle of my half-mowed lawn on a hot summer day!

The bright sun beat down on me as I stood there beside my broken mower. Grasshoppers rubbed their wings in a shrill chorus; and down the street—dogs howled in reply to the distant wailing of police sirens. A motorcycle roared by, and my neighbors chatted casually by the mailboxes.

I was only remotely aware of these things because the bottomless void had possessed me. I could feel the cold air wafting up from its depths, and I was mortally afraid.

I believe it was at that moment in my life when God gave me an epiphany.

I should explain a few things here. For about eight years before this point, I had experienced a relentless onslaught of challenges. I had bit off a lot with my startup business, and raising millions of dollars in a historic economic downturn was a herculean task. Progress was slow, and I was battered by those who judiciously stood on the sidelines stating the patently-obvious.

Several years of no income from me had made things very tough on the home front. My marriage was tested, and hurtful things were said too often. Bills went unpaid and we rarely answered the phone. My wife and I were exhausted; there was no end of this ordeal in sight. Our two children had little by the standards of their peers, and I constantly felt that I’d betrayed them.

Significant challenges also emerged in our extended family. I had become estranged from those I’d once been closest to, largely because I’d chosen to walk “wiser” paths. Beneath an avalanche of failed principles and unbridled pride, relationships were tragically redefined. In the aftermath, I had to be there for those that needed my support, although there was no one there for me.

Life had not been easy in the pews either. The class I’d faithfully taught for years was flourishing even as “new directions” in the church routinely came and went. I’d held to standards I felt the Word of God emphasized while others eagerly reset their sails to the latest breezes. But elaborate schemes against me by some of the leadership had bordered on obsessive, and I had a target on my back. I was called “the poster child for conflict” when I pointed out the real problems that were obvious to many.

For a long time leading up to that hot summer day, a week hardly passed that I was not rigorously tested. I had given of myself to others so much that I was running on fumes. I no longer had personal goals; my dreams had succumbed to a parade of trials I could no longer measure. I was just trying to survive, but my stamina was sputtering and discouragement was my constant companion.

My entire life had become a commitment of fiduciary duties and tortuous responsibilities to something or someone else. I found no one exercising the standards it seemed were always required of me. My shins were bloodied from choosing to walk the rocky high road, and every day I wondered if I had the strength to get out of bed and take one more step.

Unanswered questions plagued me. Had there been some fork in the road where I’d taken a wrong turn? Was I just fooling myself when I always tried to do the right thing? Was it my destiny to be an example to others of what not to become? Why did those who made the bad choices thrive? Would my family be better off without me? I had more questions like these, but good answers eluded me.

This describes my life at that juncture. I was an overburdened camel, vulnerable to one more straw. The inconvenient malfunction of my lawn mower was all it took, and this simple event tipped my scale.

With a rush, the ominous vision came at me and surrounded me. It saturated all my senses with a strangling fear. While I was physically standing in my own yard on that hot summer day, the rest of me was transported to a most fearful place.  My perceptions had become my reality.

With my heart pounding and my palms clammy, I stared down into the black jaws of my mower, wondering if I would topple in. And then I heard the voice. I couldn’t tell what direction it came from because it was just there, but it spoke to me and I was not the least bit surprised to hear it.

It asked me a question, “Do you still choose me?”

Suddenly I knew why I was in this precarious place. I had an all-important choice to make. At this vulnerable crossroads of my life—when I was weakest and most afraid, when I was cynical and disillusioned, would I still do the right thing? Would I still choose God?

Sure, everyone makes honest mistakes and I’m just as sinful as the next person, but I’d consciously done my best to choose God over everything else for years up to this point. I’d exercised great efforts to stay on the narrow path.

As a result, I was unable to identify any juncture in my journey where I’d willfully gone against all the plain counsel of the Word of God. Instead, under all this adversity, the Bible had come alive to me. It was the only truth I could find in my misery, and I’d often confessed that to my Heavenly Father as I poured my tears on its pages.

As I contemplated the probing question, “Do you still choose me?” I knew it was God speaking to my heart, but right then and there I was tapped out. Maybe others could have endured more, but MY glass was full and I was unable to take another drop. I had no more ability to fight the good fight.

I wanted to give up. Everything had become so difficult for me. It was tempting to step over the edge of that cliff and respond with “No,” and the urge to do that grew with each passing second.

A monsoon of spiritual forces wrestled for my soul. I was overwhelmed by a desire to shake my fist at God. I wanted Him to hurt the way I had hurt; I wanted Him to regret the path He’d put me on. It was all so unfair; I’d done my part to be loyal to Him through thick and thin, and all I had gotten was a raw deal. I felt no reason to say “Yes, I still choose you.”

In that darkest of places, I became aware of a tiny spark that glimmered deep inside me, barely visible under tangled layers of fatigue and frustration. I fixed the eyes of my heart on it. As it takes effort to focus on the speck of an airplane in a blue sky, I knew I’d not find this faint light again if I looked away.

By the grace of God, that faint light glowed a bit more. I cannot explain it better than this, but as it became easier to see, those forces which had been threatening to push me over the edge of the cliff lost some momentum.

I exerted my last ounce of will and I reached for that scant gleam through a whirlwind of intimidating shadows. In that moment, I knew that choosing Jesus offered me no positive guarantees by mankind’s standards, and it might cost me more than I’d already endured. But, my struggle at the cliff’s edge had become a rational one. Where I’d felt powerless just moments before, I was now on the right course of action. I HAD to choose God … still!  This was all about my eternal standing, and I’d be a fool to not choose Him.

My spirit—the “real me”—made a firm resolution, but I spoke the words through gritted teeth, “I still choose you, even if you slay me. You can take everything from me, but I WILL choose you. I will die confessing your name if I have to.”  It wasn’t very articulate, but it was honest.

Whoosh! The terrible dark chasm disappeared just as quickly as it had come. I looked around, but it was gone. The smell of gasoline and freshly-mowed grass lingered in the hot air. I squinted in the sunlight as the grasshoppers continued their strident refrain. It was like nothing had happened.

But it had!

For the last few years, I’ve reflected a good deal on that watershed event. My circumstances have improved from what they were before, but I attribute those blessings to a loving God that preserves me and keeps me in the hollow of His hand. Every day I wake up knowing it’s my Lord that I serve. No matter what I face, I’m here on earth to prove Him IN me.

I’d come to the very edge of my sanity on that hot summer day. I’d faced my darkest fears, but I was not without options. The Lord gave me the opportunity to make a decision, and I’m thankful He provided me with the strength and faith to make the right one.

But it will be too late to choose God for “….many on that day” (Matt. 7:21-27). According to the prophetic Scriptures, MANY well-intentioned, highly-regarded, and devoutly-religious people will discover too late that they’d neglected to make the one choice which they most needed.  Their resumes will be full of ministry and service, but the tragedy will be they never had a proper relationship with God.

If this doesn’t scare you—it should! Multitudes of frantic people will ultimately stand before Jesus in that condition. According to the passage above, they will point to their past actions, language, and achievements as evidence of their faith. Saturated with immeasurable panic, they will assert they had already made the right choice at the right time.

However, they’ll have no case. They had no real relationship with Jesus. In fact, He never even knew them! Since He wasn’t really their Lord, how could they really be His followers? Their problem will be that they had defined their commitment to God on their own terms and not His.

That’s a fatal mistake.

The plain truth of the Bible flies in the face of conventional Christian culture. The Scriptures bury the notion that one can utter a prescriptive prayer, then go their own way and be good-to-go for eternity. It doesn’t work like that.

Furthermore, real followers of God don’t find security in their denominational affiliations any more than they give high regard to their academic credentials. They are not recognized by the places they avoid, the jobs they have, and the friends they keep or the ones they don’t. God is not interested in what they wear on Sunday morning.

As the terrifying truth of Matt. 7:21-27 outlines, there are far too many “Christians” who rest in the false assurances of the things they do and say. They are no different than the Pharisees who did and said much that appeared righteous, but were exposed as “whitewashed tombs” (Matt. 23:27).

The seductive safety-in-numbers mentality persuades many “Christians” that their present situation is “just fine.” But God does not rely on polls, and it is accurate to say that to be right with God often means to be wrong with Man. The converse is equally true. It is exceedingly dangerous to assess one’s spiritual condition by the measures of a church that has “left her first love” (Rev. 2:4).

There should be nothing more precious to any of us than a genuine saving faith, and according to the first few verses of James, that’s a faith that’s been rigorously tested and proved. It’s one that remains unbroken after the ravages of protracted pain.

A real faith is one that holds up under a gauntlet of diverse personal temptations and overcomes wrong choices with wisdom. All this means that true faith chooses a right view of God over everything else. I’m not saying it doesn’t stub its toe from time to time, but a saving faith consistently returns to a proper path.

The problem with a comfortable life is it’s structured to avoid challenges, and therein lies the danger. It’s when we are most comfortable that we are most unaware of our predicament. Just as a man’s real character is exposed by adversity, so it’s equally true that one’s faith is proven in the furnace.

With this in view, I maintain that one of the reasons the world will not believe the Rapture has actually taken place—when it does, is because so many “Christians” will still be found in their comfortable churches that they have always attended. Having acted like the world for so long, these people will find themselves left where they chose to be. The circumstances of those who are left behind will be used to argue that the Bible does not really mean what it says.

So let’s bring all of this to the here and now. We don’t need any more teachers and preachers that will “tickle our ears” (2 Tim. 4:3) with socially-acceptable pabulum. While some people may not want the discomforts that come with hard-hitting biblical truth, that’s exactly what they most need. Truth divides. It puts what is right on one side and it puts what is wrong on the other. It forces us to make a choice.

Paul exhorted us to “….work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) because a real faith holds immeasurable eternal value, and a little discomfort to acquire it is a good thing. As Jim Elliott said, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

A time is indeed coming when a line will be drawn between those who know Jesus and those who thought they did. It’s best to examine your heart carefully now and make the right choice while you still can.

A pastor, an atheist, a Bible class teacher, and a businessman walked into a bar…

You’re thinking this is the opening line of a joke, right? Wrong. I am the Bible class teacher, and before you get worked up about us being in a bar, it was the only part of the restaurant that had available seating.

The lunch meeting was about a business matter. I knew all the parties, and I had made the introductions. There were mutual opportunities to provide some expertise.

The meeting went well and the mood was relaxed. With the main agenda concluded, our conversations turned to this and that. Above and behind me, the TV news was playing. I could not see it, but the businessman could and he was watching it.

“I hope they blast them to bits,” he muttered. I pivoted to look. The other parties glanced up too.

The news anchor was discussing reports that Russian forces in Syria had fired on Israeli warplanes. The Kremlin was denying it, but the Israelis saw the situation differently.

We watched for a few moments before I turned back around and said, “I’m not worried about Israel’s abilities to defend herself. They have one of the best militaries in the world.”

“I’m hoping the Russians blast the Israelis to bits,” the businessman growled. He shot me a steely gaze.

An awkward pause ensued as his real intentions surfaced. I had misread him. I sought for an appropriate reply, but none came.

The atheist broke the silence. “The Balfour Declaration is one of the greatest blights on world history,” he volunteered. “The current problems in the Middle East can be traced back to letting the Jews think they have rights to that land.”

“What’s the Balfour Declaration?” the pastor asked.

This was my chance to lend some much-needed perspective. “The Balfour Declaration was issued toward the end of WW1, around 1917.  It outlined Britain’s intentions to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in the area we now know as Israel. Back then it was called Palestine, but it wasn’t until….”

“And it still should be!” the atheist interjected. He was on a roll. “It’s criminal the way the Palestinians have been mistreated by the Israelis. The Jews have managed to convince everybody that Palestine is their rightful homeland. Our dumb leaders just play along with the whole deception, giving the Israelis everything they ask for.”

“That’s my point!” the businessman retorted. “They’ll fight to keep the Golan Heights, and that territory belongs to Syria. The Israelis have no business being there in the first place. They are going to drag us all into WW3.”

I glanced at the pastor hoping for some words of wisdom. Reason had abandoned the premises.

The pastor cleared his throat. “Well,” he slowly mused, “I know a lot of people feel the Jews have a right to their ancestral homeland, but I don’t believe that is what the Bible teaches.”

I sat in stunned silence.

He continued, “Perhaps my new friend here (he smiled at the atheist) might have imagined that’s what I believed, but many Christians misunderstand these issues. God’s promises to the Jewish people were for a specific period of time, and the Bible teaches that God has moved beyond the problems of the Jews. He is now focused on the Church.”

The pastor paused and glanced at me. I was still speechless.

“I think the holocaust was a very tragic time for the Jews,” the pastor pontificated. “However,  all people have suffered at the hands of others throughout human history. We were unjust to the Native Americans as a case in point. Should we just turn over this entire country to all the Indian tribes since this was their ancestral homeland? Of course not! It was wrong to displace the Palestinians, and it’s the right thing to pursue a two-state solution now.”

I could continue narrating this discussion, but the picture is painted. This meeting took place a few weeks ago, and I’ve tried to relate the dialogue as I recall it.

Let’s evaluate the responses of the parties here. The businessman professes to be a Christian, but I don’t see much evidence of it in his life despite the fact that he regularly attends a popular mega-church in his area. I’m confident he’s not well-read on the Middle East, so his views are probably formed by the media and opinions of others.

I’ve watched him play both sides. I’ve seen how he acts one way around one type of crowd and another way with a different group. I’ve known him for a long time, well enough to know that some of his choices show very little governance by the Holy Spirit. I attribute his mounting personal trials to this double-mindedness (James 1:8), and I’m compelled to admit that by Biblical standards he’s probably not a believer.

The atheist is actually a pretty good guy! He’s got better moral fiber than many Christians I know, and he’s generally regarded as an upstanding person in my community. He is charitable, and he publicly advocates for those who are less fortunate. Politically, he leans left – rather hard left on climate change, immigration, and gun control. I guess it’s no surprise that he remains in-step with that edge of the political spectrum when it comes to his views of Israel.

That said, he and I get along well and he’s told me a few times how much he respects me. I’ve had a number of opportunities to share my faith with him, but he insists on holding to the notion that his good works will place him in good standing “…if indeed there is a God.” I’m continuing to pray for him, and he knows that.

What about me? Well, I’m more than a Bible class teacher since I’m also an entrepreneur, an artist, and a devoted husband and father. But it’s the last seven years of teaching an adult class at my church that has challenged me to put my nose deep into the Word of God, to set aside some unfounded notions, and to “study to show myself approved unto God” (2 Tim. 2:15).

It’s this discipline – and the challenges that come with it – that have shaped the views I have and which I believe the Word of God teaches. I accept the Scriptures at face value, so it’s evident to me that the Jewish people were to be regathered back to their ancestral homeland by a sovereign act of God (Ezek. 36).

Historically, the early rumblings of this began with the Balfour Declaration, and they climaxed when Israel became a nation in 1948. For all practical reasons, that regathering continues today, although the Jews remain in spiritual unbelief just as the Bible declared they would be (Ezekiel 20:33-38; 22:17-22).

And because I feel future prophecies will be fulfilled just as literally as past ones were, I believe there will be a second worldwide regathering of the Jews to Israel. This future event will be different than the first one according to Isaiah 11:11-12:6. This next one will be the final such event, and it will signal Israel’s imminent blessing as she enters the millennial kingdom.

There will be a terrible period of time for the Jews before that point, the “time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer. 30:7). Those of them who persist in spiritual unbelief will die (Zech. 13:8-9); the smaller portion will be spared. This is all laid out candidly in the Scriptures. It’s not hard to see.

But the important takeaway here is God has not forgotten the Jews! Nor is He “focused on the church” to any exclusion or exception of his chosen people. The presence of national Israel today is not “irrelevant” – or even “problematic” – as many church leaders claim.

I know the Bible well enough to know that such ideas are heresy. I don’t care who teaches them, how many degrees they have, how big their audience is, or how many books they’ve read or sold;  they are wrong!

God still has great plans for his chosen people, and they are the same intentions He spelled out a long time ago. He hasn’t changed His mind, regretted His decisions, or moved on to “Plan B.”

Now, I’m convinced of my views because I don’t contort the Scriptures to mean something other than what they are saying. So I don’t need to overlook the stalwart truths of Romans 9-11 which make a watertight case for God’s continued devotion to the Jews. The Jews have rebelled as God declared they would, the world has reviled the Jews as God prophesied it would, and the Jews have regained their ancestral homeland as God predicted they would.

Furthermore, I don’t need to argue that the millennial kingdom is really a ‘spiritual kingdom’ or that “Israel” now means “the Church.” Neither position is true. The millennial kingdom is a literal earthly kingdom with Israel and Jerusalem as its headquarters. And “Israel” means Israel, just like the Bible says. I don’t need to hold to any position concerning the current situation in Israel or any of the regions around that nation, other than it’s all coming together according to God’s perfect and prophetic plan.

As I study the Bible, it affirms that God remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. The modern state of Israel amounts to a miracle in our time, and it is profound evidence that God says what He means and He means what He says. Any other position on this matter confirms one’s inability—or unwillingness—to accept the biblical definition of who God really is. That’s a really bad position to be in.

And that point brings me to the fourth party in our little meeting: The pastor. This guy dismays me the most.

He is an acquaintance of mine and he’s highly-educated from a renowned conservative seminar—which just goes to show formal education is not all it’s cracked up to be. He and I are not close, but we’ve met socially a few times. By standard assessments, his church is doing well and people speak respectfully of him.

So why doesn’t this guy regard Israel the way he ought to? The real question is this: “Why do so many church leaders fail to interpret the Word of God as it needs to be interpreted?”

They don’t want to.

If you don’t like that answer, here are some others to consider:

They are stupid. By this, I mean they are mentally, emotionally, or otherwise incapable of responsibly processing the truth. In a national park a while back, a woman walked right up to a wild buffalo to photograph it. It gored her badly. The signs warned her about this, the bystanders told her not to do this, and common sense advised against this, but she did it anyways. She was stupid! She did not process relevant information the responsible way.  For one reason or another, she lacked the essential capacity.
They are fools. This is a bit different than the first reason though the end results are similar. The Biblical definition of a fool is one who is unable to learn (see ‘stupid’) or is unwilling to learn. This latter element leans toward a spiritual problem. Proverbs says a lot about fools, and their outcomes are never good because they violate God’s Word and they rebut God’s standards. Basically, they get what they deserve. We draw nearer to the core problem here with this notion of ‘fools.’
They are deceived.  Here we take one step closer to the terminal issue. It’s easy to lose your way when you’re not paying attention to the signs. And that’s exactly what’s happening with a lot of church leaders today. By failing to respect God’s Word as they should, and by willfully ignoring its instructions, they are opening themselves up to influences and interpretations which cross the grain of divine truth. As a result, “deceptive spirits” are unleashed (1 Tim. 4:1), political correctness invades, and lowest common denominators are elevated to highest esteem. When deception enters a church, Biblical truth is always mocked and doubted.
They are depraved. Okay, now we’re fundamentally back to “they don’t want to” since it’s our depravity that causes us to make wrong choices. God’s Word is either right or wrong. It’s all black and white here; there’s no gray. If you believe it is right, then you must believe everything it states, even if that’s inconsistent with the world’s opinions. The worst thing to do is willingly ignore or dilute the truth that “….will never pass away”  (Matt. 24:35). It’s mortally dangerous to flirt with eternal consequences.
Perhaps some are thinking, “Now wait a minute! Don’t be so dogmatic. What if I just have a different understanding of these passages about Israel and the Jews? What if I genuinely believe that the Bible is saying something different here?  Isn’t that all right?”

No, it’s not.

God’s Word should not be subordinated to spineless relativism and personal opinion. Its animate and divine nature is the reason it convicts and changes lives (Heb. 4:12). If you question its accuracy, intents, and effect, it’s tantamount to doubting its Divine Author.

Moreover, we are specifically instructed to hold to proper prophetic interpretations (2 Peter 1:20) which is one way of saying there’s no room for any “You’ve-got-your-opinion-and-I-have-mine” postures. As I said before, there are clear standards with God’s Word, and it’s our obligation to seek them out and conform to them.

Misinterpreting biblical passages about the Jews and Israel amounts to leaving your brain at the door. These are among the clearest prophecies in the Word of God. The only way to see in them something they are not saying is to refuse to accept what they are saying. In that case, anybody’s opinion is as good as the next person’s which means there is no biblical standard anymore.

It necessarily follows that the Bible always extols truth and correct interpretations. Since the Scriptures do not contradict themselves, will we not contradict each other when we responsibly interpret them. Alternative explanations which steer us away from God’s intended Word are neither correct nor are they from God. It is Man’s rules and interpretations that always render our service to God ineffective (Matt. 15:9), and we can ill-afford such compromise in tenuous times as these.

Let me conclude by returning to that lunch meeting and to the errant views of my companions. A time is coming when God will put the people of earth on trial for how they treated the Jews and for how they tried to divide up the land of Israel (Joel 3:2). God Himself will preside as Judge, and no corruption will taint the outcome. The evidence will be weighed and the facts will be made clear. The guilty will know they are guilty.

John MacArthur once said, “If you get Israel right, you get your eschatology right.” He is correct. Israel is prophetically significant in so many respects, and God is still at work with His people. While events with the Jews and with Israel may yet take place which tax our knowledge and test our faith, we cannot permit the instability of human reason to override what the Word of God teaches.

Israel is God’s covenant land, and the Jews are His covenant people. The Bible makes this clear. God takes His oaths with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (and their descendants) very seriously!

We should too.