End Time Hysteria and Tormenting Fear

I try my best not to engage in end time hysteria. The end time for me is the absence of my next heartbeat. I'm very critical of a segment of Christianity that seems to focus on the end time to the exclusion of doing the work and living life in the present. They create a sense of dread whose author IS NOT God. I do not know how reasonably they can reconcile that fear mongering with, Jesus' command to, in faith, place our well being in his hands: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." That seems pretty clear to me. 

Many foolishly confuse the fear of God - which is sacred reverence and respect, even frightful awe, and common fear which is tormenting and antithetical to Faith. They seem to believe that Christians should live in fear of things to come. Whether they actually preach this or not, it becomes the natural implication and practice of those constantly rehearsing the "terrible times to come." Such fear mongering is by the spirit of The Evil One. Scripture clearly states that "fear hath torment." "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us." 1Jn 4:18 ff. Tormenting dread is the opposite of Faith and Love.  

Some who rehearse the terrible times to come grow so weak in faith that the very Church itself, the Church militant, which is composed of sinful and imperfect people, begins to look totally evil to them. Every failure of every member is a witness to them, in their fearful paranoia, of the anti-christ. They cannot understand why the Church militant does not already look like the Church Triumphant. They do not grasp the difference between those being delivered from sin and growing in spiritual perfection, and those made perfect and Glorified around God's Throne. 

Five people in the last two days have mis-quoted to me the scripture concerning the confounding of the very-elect of God saying, "even the elect will be fooled."  It takes spiritual error and pessimism to entertain that idea. It IS NOT so; scripture does NOT say it. "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." 

I don't know about you, but hardly a day goes by that I don't meet an anti-christ or see one preaching lies on T.V.  To assume that the elect may be confounded makes a lie of Jesus' statement concerning the Church, "and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."