The Awakening 1

For the previous post, see here.
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1. It was a rather strange event, during a winter camp meeting at Brooksville in January 1977. We went to the morning service. We had lunch. I took a nap in the modular home of Lucien and Ruby Brown. I woke up in a start, terrified. It was an awakening.

The friendship of my parents with the Browns went back to Indiana. They were older than my parents, old time Pilgrims. They came and visited us in Fort Lauderdale a few times. My dad was a pretty busy man with his work (we used to joke about the old song, "When you coming home, Dad?" and then later, "When you coming home, son?") Lucien was retired and so had the time to work on a tree house for me.

The first tree house he built was in the birch tree in the front side yard. Later he would build a fort for me where my swing set had been.

I went to sleep blissfully ignorant. I woke up terrified for my soul. I don't know whether some brain connection finally connected. Some might say it was conviction by the Holy Spirit. I went to sleep fairly carefree. I woke up in a state of fear for my soul that would continue off and on into my time at seminary over ten years later.

2. It is probably not quite right to say that I did not have some terror prior to that day. In 1970, Hal Lindsey had published Late Great Planet Earth, the precursor to the Left Behind series of the 90s. We had watched two reel to reel films [1] at church on Sunday evenings in the 70s based on Lindsey's work--A Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder. I found these apocalyptic films terrifying as a child.

In the first film, a wife is talking to her husband when he stops responding. His electric razor is still in the sink but he is gone. The rapture has happened. All Christians have disappeared from the earth. Those who are left now face the seven year tribulation.

I've already mentioned that my grandfather Shepherd was a dispensationalist prophecy teacher. This particular approach originated in the 1800s with a British man by the name of John Darby. It is quite ingenious in the way it stitches together disparate passages from across the Bible. I have often told students that I wouldn't dare tell God not to fulfill Scripture however God might want. After all, some of the fuller meanings in the New Testament are only tangentially related to what those passages originally meant in the Old Testament.

However, Darby's system has little to do with what those passages meant originally. There is no clear place where a seven year tribulation is taught. Revelation 7:14 does not say in Greek "the Great Tribulation" but these are they who have come out of great tribulation. You only get to the number seven when you add the 3.5s of Revelation 12 and then equate it to a supposedly missing week in Daniel 9.

Similarly, there is no singular "antichrist" in 1 John. The beast of Revelation is equated with the "man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians, but is this correct? And are these figures from the first century rather than a yet unfulfilled future? The New Testament never says the temple will be rebuilt. The prophecies of a rebuilt temple in the Old Testament were fulfilled in 516BC and there is no place for a temple after Christ's atonement (Rev. 21:22).

This goes back to what I said about having a lot to work through when I began to study the Bible seriously.

3. The films terrified me. For a season I would not let my mother out of sight at Kmart, for fear she would be taken in the rapture and I would be left behind. Even playing outside on the sidewalk I would occasionally go back inside to make sure my mother was still there. One day in the sixth grade I was so fearful that they sent me home for the day (I may have had a slight fever too).

My mother gave me a little box of Scripture promises. There were verses like Joshua 1:9 and Jeremiah 29:11. They didn't help a lot but they helped a little. This is something I have come to believe about these sorts of mental states. No reason will help much. But perhaps these sorts of things help a tiny bit. They are greatly appreciated in retrospect.

My soul experienced great torment and fear off and on for the next decade. I was afraid to sleep by myself. I was afraid of the dark. I would pray over and over, "Lord, please forgive me if I've sinned. Lord, please forgive me if I've sinned." I could not think of any sin act I had done, unless it was a lack of faith shown by the fact that I asked God to forgive my sins over and over again.

What if I couldn't remember my sins? Then I couldn't ask forgiveness for them! If I couldn't ask forgiveness for them specifically, was I doomed never to find forgiveness and thus inevitably faced hell!!! These were the kinds of irrational torments of my soul in those days.

What if I didn't read my chapter of the Bible for the day? What if I didn't have devotions? What if I didn't pray before I went to sleep? I often failed at these and thus guilt heaped upon guilt.

4. I was obsessed with having a moment I could call "getting saved" for sure. There was a song at Frankfort Camp meeting--"It was on a Monday, somebody touched me." We were supposed to stand up on the day we were saved. I felt guilty for standing up on "It was on a Sunday," because I really didn't know. I figured it probably was on a Sunday... that is, if I was truly saved! Eventually they added a verse, "I don't know what day it was but somebody touched me."

I wreaked havoc even in college with this doubt. I horrified my girlfriend not only with uncertainty over whether I loved her or not--it was an intellectual question and I wanted to be honest. I did not know what love was. After we broke up I decided that I did. :-)

But I also horrified her with the question of my salvation. One day on the ride home from church I told her I wasn't sure if I was saved or not and spent the whole lunch time in the student center praying for some sort of assurance. A verse that didn't help much but helped (that my mother gave me) was "If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things" (1 John 3:20). I don't know if that's what John meant but I like the interpretation.

There was a moment in my teens, going up the outside stairs of the house in Fort Lauderdale, that I felt a peace. That's the moment I pegged my salvation on. Of course I now think I was saved the whole time. Theologically, I do not believe there has been a moment in my life when God would not have taken me into eternal life. Before I was awakened, God would have taken me in my ignorance. I have moved toward him every moment sense.

I will stop short of saying that all this torment was Satan, although it could have been. I suspect it was something developmental. I'm just glad it's over.

[1] I got certified in middle school to run a reel to reel projector. :-)