I was sitting in my office when I received the news that Chuck had passed away. Although the news was not unexpected, a sadness settled on my heart. Then I looked up and saw a coffee cup that still holds my pens and miscellaneous paraphernalia. It is a deep blue cup emblazoned with the white Koinonia Institute spyglass logo and the words: Acts 17:11, “Turning Believers into Bereans.” I smiled as a flood of memories came to my conscious mind.
Chuck did indeed bring a generation of old and new Believers alike into a greater knowledge of the Scriptures. As we often joked, “Once you’ve attended a Chuck Missler course, you will never read the Bible or listen to a sermon in the same way again!”
I was introduced to Chuck when I purchased a prophetic conference DVD from a ministry in Florida in 2006, a couple of months before my husband passed away. I purchased many of Chuck’s DVD’s believing I would have more time with my husband to study them together. I viewed most of them alone. However, those studies helped me during my time of grief. Chuck’s firm knowledge and faith in the Word of God, his unfettered vulnerability in sharing how God worked difficult times in his life for his good, and his desire to see everyone he met develop a deeper walk in all that God would purpose for them drew many to his commentaries and his strategic studies.
Within a few months, I was blessed to come to Koinonia Institute in Idaho as an intern and later became an employee. My time under Chuck’s mentoring never felt like a job, but as a continuous adventure in discovery. Chuck was never satisfied with his perceived knowledge of Biblical topics. He had an uncanny ability to view the Scriptures from 10,000 feet to see the whole counsel of God from Genesis to Revelation; and then drill down to write pages of analysis of one verse.
Chuck challenged everyone not to become a “Misslerite,” but to take everything he said to the Bible and to discover for ourselves what we determine to be true or not (Acts 17:11). With this simple philosophy, Chuck enabled and encouraged generations to develop and grow in individual relationships with God, in knowledge of God’s Word, and in firm foundations that will hold steady while the times in which we live are shaking the world.
Chuck’s legacy will continue and lives will be touched with the many written and digital works he left behind to reach another generation. But for many of us, the Bereans Chuck helped to develop, his legacy as a father is far more personal. For me, my time with Chuck was capped with his very personal gesture of giving me away in marriage to a Godly man who I just happened to meet while he volunteered at Koinonia House. For me, I was restored from widowhood to a continuation of life for which I was being prepared. Though he will be greatly missed, I smile as I see Chuck restored to his precious Nan, and the Jesus he so loved… and I am sure he is diligently seeking out everyone for whom he had outstanding questions! We love you, Chuck! You still make us smile!
