Enough!

Gregory L. Fisher in Leadership magazine tells of teaching a class at the West African Bible College. One day the class was discussing the Second Coming of Christ. A student asked Fisher a question that took him by surprise. The question was this: “What will he say when he shouts?”

The student said, “Reverend, 1 Thessalonians 4:16 says that Christ will descend from heaven with a loud command. I would like to know what that command will be.”

Fisher wanted to leave the question unanswered, to tell the student that they must not go past what Scripture has revealed, but his mind wandered to an encounter he had earlier in the day with a refugee from the Liberian civil war.

The man, a high school principal, told him how he was apprehended by a two-man death squad. After several hours of terror, as the men described how they would torture and kill him, he narrowly escaped. After hiding in the bush for two days, he was able to find his family and escape to a neighboring country.

The escape cost him dearly: two of his children lost their lives. The stark cruelty unleashed on an unsuspecting, undeserving population had touched Fisher deeply. He also saw flashbacks of the beggars that he passed each morning on his way to the office. Every day he saw how poverty destroys dignity, robs people of the best of what it means to be human, and sometimes substitutes the worst of what it means to be an animal. Fisher says even now he is haunted by the vacant eyes of people who have lost all hope.

“Reverend, you have not given me an answer,” the student demanded. “What will [Christ] say?”
The question hadn’t gone away. “Enough,” Fisher said in answer to the question. “He will shout, Enough! when he returns.”

A look of surprise opened the face of the student. “What do you mean, enough?” And Fisher said firmly, “Enough suffering. Enough starvation. Enough terror. Enough death. Enough indignity. Enough lives trapped in hopelessness. Enough sickness and disease. Enough time. ENOUGH!”

Gregory L. Fisher, Leadership “Second Coming,” 1991. Adapted by King Duncan