Scripture repeats the phrase a time of trouble several times. It is a phrase deserving of study by the serious student, so to give some idea about how the world (nature) is managed by God, and the adjustments made by devout persons to the inevitable times of trouble. The concept relates to times in various eras offering some insight relative to the end of all things – a final time of trouble. When discussing this theme, and to escape the accusation of fantasy or religiosity, one remembers that both secular and religious sources predict the end of nature as we know it. There are various secular scenarios to describe it from the clash of meteorites; the exhaustion of energy, especially related to the Sun, or in a whimper when the resources of earth have been depleted.
Reference to a time of trouble is common in both the Old and New Testaments. The prophets made it a major point in some of their messages. One of the main objectives of the prophets was to assert that there would be times of trouble, and that the devout of God could learn to manage them with a sense of personal victory. For the faithful there was to be ultimate deliverance from the suffering. If they were to share in the disasters, they could take it with a kind of bravery; an endurance of faith in God and his will; and, a witness that God is present in the mix of things. The witness of Christians persecuted in various historical periods, noted for example in the poignant stories of those who suffered in wartime prison – the tests of devout persons in what seem like impossible oppressive situations. From this point, decades after the Holocaust(s), one wonders how a congregation of human beings, under the leadership of Adolph Hitler, could design and carry out such depraved and satanic programs. Further, we remind ourselves that similar pogroms occurred numerous times in history, but they did not have the machinery to make them as extensive/intensive as occurred in the twentieth century.
Christians going through times of trouble can find relief in a standard means of Christian endurance and confidence, even recovery to normalcy in patience engendered by prayer, Scripture and faith. Each one acts in its own province, and each is needed to work out the conflicts of our lives in both the natural and spiritual contexts. One of the important understandings of the meaning of Christianity for the individual is that there is life unity in us. The author of natural life is the author of spiritual life. Life is the most striking evidence of God. He will not permit that free life, when he has it given back to him, to be taken away. The natural part may die during the time of trouble, but until it does it is guided, maintained, and is inexorably related to spiritual life. God gave mankind the ability to reproduce. We even call it procreation. It does what God did in the primordial past, to generate life related to human beings to get under way. That procreation does not provide the spiritual life one needs to take advantage of the divine grace that relates to hope. Hope, in Scripture, relates to immortality – life after death. Once we learn to manage nature’s life, from our parents, through prayer, Scripture and faith we have entered into the ultimate life inheritance and have no fear what man may do to us. This understanding of the provisions of God in Christian faith has protected persons from personal distress – even protected from folly in times of trouble. Faith must be chosen. I am most surprised at the loss in some troubled Christians that would take them through the times of trouble – depressions, warfare, family breakdowns and the list grows for sorrows. We ask God for sustaining faith for all things. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020