More than Conquerors

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Romans 8:18

The first time I ever drove a car was because of the rapture. 

I was about 10 years old when the evangelistic film “A Thief in the Night” came to our church in western South Dakota. This 1970’s classic film starts out with a scene of an electric razor buzzing in the sink but nobody in the bathroom to shave with it. Then the camera pans to images of pots bubbling on the stove in an empty kitchen and a radio playing but no one there to listen to it. The rapture has happened. The remainder of the film tells the story of the tribulation, the antichrist, and Christ’s powerful return. 

One day, soon after seeing the film, I came home from school and it was just like the movie: I walked into an empty kitchen with a bubbling pot on the stove and a radio playing. I called out to my mom, “Where are you?” and I couldn’t find my dad outside. I thought, “This is it. The rapture has happened and I have missed it.” So I picked up the church directory and started working through the phone numbers of the people I knew wouldn’t have missed it. Nobody answered, and we didn’t have mobile phones, so I was at a dead end.  

I knew what was going to happen next. My only possible chance of survival was to pack up the family car with canned goods and drive into the Black Hills to hide from the antichrist for seven years. Since I’d driven a 1940s dump truck with my father to feed the cattle, I thought that driving a car would work the same way. Our farm was very rural, so it wasn’t uncommon for everyone to just leave the keys in their car. I was so short then (laugh if you want) and I couldn’t sit and reach the pedals to drive, so I was crouched along the floorboard, furiously trying to pedal the automatic vehicle. I drove down the gravel road to our nearest godly neighbor, about four miles away, and parked the car in their drive. Panicked, I ran up to the door and, to my relief, Barb opened it. She asked, “Greg, what are you doing?!” And I just replied, “Oh, nothing,” then got back in the car and drove home. 

It was a long time before I told my parents that story.  

In those days, we thought a lot about the coming of the Lord and our own homegoings. It was the theme of many hymns and sermons and, perhaps, sometimes a source of fear. Today, I think the pendulum has swung back the other way, as if we don’t talk much at all about the second coming of Christ. But there is a future life to come! For those of us who are in Jesus, we’ll have complete victory in the end and it would help us to reorient our perspective so that we might better understand what that means. 

Future victory begins with hope in Christ, and the Christian life makes no sense without His resurrection at the heart of it all. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied above all men.” Why would Paul say something like this? It sounds so counterintuitive-- which it is, because Christ didn’t come to earth to make your life easier. In fact, the call to follow Jesus always has a cost, especially in our cultural moment where everything is pushing against following Him and relying on the authority of Scripture. 

Remember that Jesus told His disciples what it would take for them to truly follow Him – taking up their cross! 

Sometimes when people come to Jesus, they’re surprised by the challenges they immediately face. There is a reason for that. We have real enemy who seeks to kill, steal, and destroy. But we also know that this world is not all that there is, and Hope is what sustains us! With practice –asking God to help us see rightly-- and with the support of our Christian community, we can take the long view looking at our suffering in light of eternity. 

C. S. Lewis once said that the sufferings of our life will seem like nothing more than one night in a bad hotel. But there’s more! We are conquerors through Christ because, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to his purpose,” (Romans 8:28). 

But Paul doesn’t end his discussion with verse 28. He finishes the chapter by saying, 

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword? For as it is written for your sake we face death all day long, sheep to be slaughtered, Know in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

As Christians, we are more than conquerors! We don’t know the day or hour of the Lord’s return, but we do know that God will make the heavens and the earth new once again. That’s beyond our ability to fully imagine, but it’s put in beautiful, poetic terms in Revelation 21. If you are a follower of Jesus, John’s promises from this passage are for you. There he talks about heavenly rewards, and we should, too.

One of the most beautiful moments in my life occurred in front of our fireplace in Ohio when our three boys were reading through C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle for the second time. The closing passage about the life to come on the other side of Revelation struck us poignantly: 

“And as he spoke to them, he no longer looked to them like a lion, but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of the stories, and we can most truly say they all lived happily ever after. But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page. Now, at last, they were beginning Chapter One of the great story which no one on Earth has read-- which goes on forever and in which every chapter is better than the one before.” 

I closed the book and there was silence. One of the boys asked, “Will we get to see Grammy in heaven?”  I said, “Absolutely.” Then another asked, “Will there be ice cream?” And I said, “The best you have ever tasted.” 

Nothing that is good and true and beautiful is ever lost. How we serve God in our families and workplaces and churches is not lost. It is taken up and glorified in the life to come. 

What are you willing to do and endure to enjoy this promise? For me, more than anything else in my life, I want to hear the words when I stand before my Lord and my redeemer, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” 

We are not simply holding down the fort until Jesus comes. We are charged to roll up our sleeves and wade into the difficult and messy work of the Kingdom, even when it feels exhausting or hopeless. We can keep our eyes on the prize of our heavenly calling because we know this life is not all there is.  

Additional reading: Romans 8:18-39, Revelation 21:1-7