HOLDING HOPE IN THE HARDEST TIMES
One hundred years ago, the United States was experiencing a convulsion of culture and character that became known as the Roaring Twenties. It was a decade of decadence—glamorous, prosperous, and licentious. While other countries were also experiencing similar circumstances, nothing captured the world’s collective imagination as did what was happening in America.
The poster child for this decade of excess was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a novelist, who coined the term The Jazz Age to describe the time. Fitzgerald’s life and career tracked the trajectory of the twenties—its opulence, its excesses, its prosperity, and its fragility.
If the twenties were the years of anything goes, the thirties were the years of nothing goes. The stock market crash of 1929 had repercussions that traveled around the world. Entire economies went from unexpected highs to unimaginable lows. Fitzgerald’s life and career collapsed along with the stock market. In the 1930s, he was writing magazine articles just to pay his bills.
This context brings clarity to his quote from an article in the February, 1936 issue of Esquire magazine: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
I need to caution you that Fitzgerald was not talking about thinking that opposites were the same, or that one extreme could become its antithesis just by believing it was so. He was not saying, for instance, that men could become women, or that women could become men. His next sentence gives more perspective to what he was thinking: “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” He was speaking from painful and autobiographical experience. To his credit, even though Fitzgerald may have seen conditions as hopeless, he did not give up and give in totally to despair.
I was thinking about this while considering what Jesus said about the characteristics of the end times in Matthew 24:9-14: “Then they will hand you over to be persecuted and will kill you. And you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. Then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will rise and will deceive many. Because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
I want to point out in particular the four times Jesus used the world many in the above passage.
If, as believers in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and our Savior, we trust that what He says is true, it should be clear to us that in the last days there will be a great deal of betrayal, hatred, deception, and apostasy. Jesus didn’t say this would happen to a few. He said it would be the future of many. I believe what Jesus said is true, and we are seeing the effects of it even now throughout the earth.
However, here is the opposed idea, as Fitzgerald put it, that I want you to hold in your mind at the same time. Despite the increase in deception and apostasy, the truth of the gospel is also being preached in increasing measure, and a worldwide revival (actually, what I describe as an awakening) is occurring.
There always have been and always will be scorners and scoffers who will say there is no such revival, and that the very idea is nothing more than wishful thinking. Unfortunately, some preachers have provided plenty of material the mockers can cite to bolster their arguments.
One of the favorite things the scorners do is point out the inflated claims some preachers make about how many people they help, how many are in attendance at their services or meetings, or how many salvations they report. I want to caution you to make sure you say only what is true and can be verified. Certainly, there are occasions when we can make mistakes in either our counting or our speaking. What I am talking about are times when numbers are thrown around without any accounting or accountability, and claims are made without a foundation in fact. We need to speak the truth, and not give the adversary a reason to accuse us of misleading people.
There are times when accusations of inflated claims will be made regardless of what the number really is or how thoroughly it can be verified. Here are two examples.
Shortly after we built the building we are worshipping in now (we occupied it in 1987), someone said there was no way that it could seat 5,200 people, as we said it would. That is the capacity for which we planned, and the size facility we built. We finally grew weary of the accusation that we were exaggerating the number of seats, so we measured the seating length of every pew in the building. We then added up all the linear distance available in the pews and divided it by the number of inches designated to each seat at that time. (That number is different now than it was nearly thirty years ago.) When we did the math, the seating capacity was exactly 5,200. The building has been remodeled since then, and we now have theater seats on the main floor instead of pews, so the seating capacity is different than it was at first.
During the pandemic, we distributed food aid from our church parking lot. We did that week after week after week. By the time the distribution ended, we had given out well over a million pounds of food. There were multiple truck trailers in our parking lot at each of these events, and they were loaded to capacity. Our volunteers who helped during that effort will affirm it was over a million pounds—they were the ones who had to lift it into people’s vehicles! Even though it is now in the past, it was a great benefit to our community. We did not exaggerate the scale of our operation. We will not apologize for helping those in need, regardless of whether unbelievers believe our numbers or not.
The point is this: what God is doing in the earth is good enough, and miraculous enough, and supernatural enough, that He does not need our help by embellishing or fabricating statistics. Abraham tried to help God fulfill His purpose, and we see how that turned out.
Here is another point: revival is happening, and most of it is happening without fanfare. Many of the news media gatekeepers are doing their best to keep it quiet. There are two reasons for this. One is that good news doesn’t sell. The old adage among newspaper people was and still is, “If it bleeds, it leads.” The story of a man going on a deadly rampage is news. The story of a man who repents of sin and becomes the husband, father, and friend God created him to be is not news—at least, not on earth. Heaven rejoices when that happens, but earth barely notices.
In my opinion, another reason revival is underreported is that it does not conform to the worldview of most people in the media world. It should come as no surprise that doubters will ask questions that are skeptical and come to conclusions that are scornful. You can try to correct their assumptions and declarations if you want. I recommend that you focus on preaching the gospel.
What is not debatable is the effect revival has on those who are being revived. Here is just one instance among many I could mention. One of our City Harvest Network members has taken the charge to go into all the world literally. He has hosted crusades in many parts of the world. Some of the most remarkable miracles have happened in those meetings. Blind eyes have come open. Deaf ears hear again. The dead have been raised. The individuals, families, and communities that are affected don’t need to read a headline to know that revival is occurring. They know it from firsthand experience. Don’t try to convince them that God is not real, or that Jesus Christ is not the Savior. They will answer their critics as the blind man who washed in the pool of Siloam did: “I was blind, and now I see!”
Yes, we are living in the days that Jesus foretold, when the love of many will grow cold. Don’t let that bother you in the least. Hold this opposed idea in the forefront of your thinking: multitudes are coming to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Their transformation will not end with them—it will reverberate into all their acquaintances and associations. What starts with just one will not end there. It will result in the repercussions of the gospel message sweeping multitudes into the kingdom of God. We are strategically positioned by God to be a part of that glorious awakening in these finest days of human history.
Yours for the Harvest,
Dr. Rod Parsley
Founder & General Overseer
The poster child for this decade of excess was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a novelist, who coined the term The Jazz Age to describe the time. Fitzgerald’s life and career tracked the trajectory of the twenties—its opulence, its excesses, its prosperity, and its fragility.
If the twenties were the years of anything goes, the thirties were the years of nothing goes. The stock market crash of 1929 had repercussions that traveled around the world. Entire economies went from unexpected highs to unimaginable lows. Fitzgerald’s life and career collapsed along with the stock market. In the 1930s, he was writing magazine articles just to pay his bills.
This context brings clarity to his quote from an article in the February, 1936 issue of Esquire magazine: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
I need to caution you that Fitzgerald was not talking about thinking that opposites were the same, or that one extreme could become its antithesis just by believing it was so. He was not saying, for instance, that men could become women, or that women could become men. His next sentence gives more perspective to what he was thinking: “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” He was speaking from painful and autobiographical experience. To his credit, even though Fitzgerald may have seen conditions as hopeless, he did not give up and give in totally to despair.
I was thinking about this while considering what Jesus said about the characteristics of the end times in Matthew 24:9-14: “Then they will hand you over to be persecuted and will kill you. And you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. Then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will rise and will deceive many. Because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
I want to point out in particular the four times Jesus used the world many in the above passage.
- Many will fall away
- Many false prophets will arise
- They will deceive many
- The love of many will grow cold
If, as believers in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and our Savior, we trust that what He says is true, it should be clear to us that in the last days there will be a great deal of betrayal, hatred, deception, and apostasy. Jesus didn’t say this would happen to a few. He said it would be the future of many. I believe what Jesus said is true, and we are seeing the effects of it even now throughout the earth.
However, here is the opposed idea, as Fitzgerald put it, that I want you to hold in your mind at the same time. Despite the increase in deception and apostasy, the truth of the gospel is also being preached in increasing measure, and a worldwide revival (actually, what I describe as an awakening) is occurring.
There always have been and always will be scorners and scoffers who will say there is no such revival, and that the very idea is nothing more than wishful thinking. Unfortunately, some preachers have provided plenty of material the mockers can cite to bolster their arguments.
One of the favorite things the scorners do is point out the inflated claims some preachers make about how many people they help, how many are in attendance at their services or meetings, or how many salvations they report. I want to caution you to make sure you say only what is true and can be verified. Certainly, there are occasions when we can make mistakes in either our counting or our speaking. What I am talking about are times when numbers are thrown around without any accounting or accountability, and claims are made without a foundation in fact. We need to speak the truth, and not give the adversary a reason to accuse us of misleading people.
There are times when accusations of inflated claims will be made regardless of what the number really is or how thoroughly it can be verified. Here are two examples.
Shortly after we built the building we are worshipping in now (we occupied it in 1987), someone said there was no way that it could seat 5,200 people, as we said it would. That is the capacity for which we planned, and the size facility we built. We finally grew weary of the accusation that we were exaggerating the number of seats, so we measured the seating length of every pew in the building. We then added up all the linear distance available in the pews and divided it by the number of inches designated to each seat at that time. (That number is different now than it was nearly thirty years ago.) When we did the math, the seating capacity was exactly 5,200. The building has been remodeled since then, and we now have theater seats on the main floor instead of pews, so the seating capacity is different than it was at first.
During the pandemic, we distributed food aid from our church parking lot. We did that week after week after week. By the time the distribution ended, we had given out well over a million pounds of food. There were multiple truck trailers in our parking lot at each of these events, and they were loaded to capacity. Our volunteers who helped during that effort will affirm it was over a million pounds—they were the ones who had to lift it into people’s vehicles! Even though it is now in the past, it was a great benefit to our community. We did not exaggerate the scale of our operation. We will not apologize for helping those in need, regardless of whether unbelievers believe our numbers or not.
The point is this: what God is doing in the earth is good enough, and miraculous enough, and supernatural enough, that He does not need our help by embellishing or fabricating statistics. Abraham tried to help God fulfill His purpose, and we see how that turned out.
Here is another point: revival is happening, and most of it is happening without fanfare. Many of the news media gatekeepers are doing their best to keep it quiet. There are two reasons for this. One is that good news doesn’t sell. The old adage among newspaper people was and still is, “If it bleeds, it leads.” The story of a man going on a deadly rampage is news. The story of a man who repents of sin and becomes the husband, father, and friend God created him to be is not news—at least, not on earth. Heaven rejoices when that happens, but earth barely notices.
In my opinion, another reason revival is underreported is that it does not conform to the worldview of most people in the media world. It should come as no surprise that doubters will ask questions that are skeptical and come to conclusions that are scornful. You can try to correct their assumptions and declarations if you want. I recommend that you focus on preaching the gospel.
What is not debatable is the effect revival has on those who are being revived. Here is just one instance among many I could mention. One of our City Harvest Network members has taken the charge to go into all the world literally. He has hosted crusades in many parts of the world. Some of the most remarkable miracles have happened in those meetings. Blind eyes have come open. Deaf ears hear again. The dead have been raised. The individuals, families, and communities that are affected don’t need to read a headline to know that revival is occurring. They know it from firsthand experience. Don’t try to convince them that God is not real, or that Jesus Christ is not the Savior. They will answer their critics as the blind man who washed in the pool of Siloam did: “I was blind, and now I see!”
Yes, we are living in the days that Jesus foretold, when the love of many will grow cold. Don’t let that bother you in the least. Hold this opposed idea in the forefront of your thinking: multitudes are coming to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Their transformation will not end with them—it will reverberate into all their acquaintances and associations. What starts with just one will not end there. It will result in the repercussions of the gospel message sweeping multitudes into the kingdom of God. We are strategically positioned by God to be a part of that glorious awakening in these finest days of human history.
Yours for the Harvest,
Dr. Rod Parsley
Founder & General Overseer