HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 11, 2025 – As born-again believers, we’re to fear God, but we’re not to be afraid of him. We’re not to be afraid of anything, though we’re also not to be foolhardy in our lack of fear. We’re not to test the Lord by standing at the edge of a cliff, boasting that God would never let us fall. No. But we can be confident that we’re constantly under God’s protection as long as we choose to do God’s will.

Trying to make people afraid of God and afraid of what the future holds is a schtick that’s growing in popularity with certain preachers. Without question, those preachers are not born-again and therefore don’t know God as their Father, which is why they default to preaching fear as a mechanism to hold people’s attention while separating them from their money. YouTube is full of preachers trying to get their audience to subscribe, donate, and be afraid – be very afraid – of what God has in store for them. What these preachers are selling is not the Gospel, which is at heart a message of hope, but rather the anti-Gospel, as sanctioned and approved by the devil.

The reason we’re to fear God and God only is firstly because scripture tells us to and secondly because there is none greater than God: Everything and everyone is under his authority. At the same time, fearing God is another way of acknowledging his absolute magnificent perfection and therefore, by logical extension, trusting him. So, we can take to the bank that God protects us from harm and wants only the best for his children. Our Father would never turn on a dime and yell “GOTCHA!” while plunging a dagger into our heart and laughing as we splutter our last breath. That is not the God we serve. We know for a fact that is not the God we serve.

And yet, the fearmongering preachers would have us believe that is exactly the God we serve, and that God will at some point suddenly become our worst enemy. What Father would turn on his children who love him, let alone a perfect Father? These preachers point to the book of Revelation as proof we should be afraid of the coming horrors, without taking into consideration that God’s children will be fully under God’s protection even during the tribulation, until it’s their time, and that we can only reap what we sow. If we’ve earned the prophesied horrors, we’ll get them, just as sure as we’ll get whatever we’ve earned at any other time. But if you’re genuinely born-again, the promise of reaping what you sow shouldn’t make you afraid of God; it should instead prompt you to want to hold onto God’s hand even tighter and follow ever closer behind Jesus.

We should fear the Lord because scripture tells us to and because none is greater than the Lord. But we should never be afraid of our heavenly Father or fear that he’ll hurt us on a whim. The horrors unleashed during the tribulation are not meant for us; we might be there to witness them, but we’ll remain fully under God’s protection until it’s our time.

And then we get to go Home.