Coincidence in the books of Esther and Ruth

The two most "random" books in the Old Testament (IMHO) are the two short stories named after their strong, heroic female protagonists, Esther and Ruth. I say "random" because neither of the books "advances our knowledge" overtly, nor do they give us any significant "historical information" as the rest of the histories do, nor, for that matter, do any laws or proclamations come down from on high (except for a key one from a pagan king in the book of Esther which only applies during that story).

In fact, both books are obviously inserted as interludes, for a change of pace in the midst of some heavier material on either side. The book of Ruth takes place at the same time as the Judges ruled over Israel, although no specific year is described in the book; it follows the highly depressing book of Judges and precedes the long history of David and the other Kings of Israel. Meanwhile, Esther takes place during the period of Babylonian captivity, and thus makes a nice change of pace from the failings of the initial forays back to the Holy Land and the long, wordy Book of Job.

Both books are part of the five-book Megillot, along with the preachy book of Ecclesiastes, the semi-erotic Song of Songs, and the somewhat depressing book of Lamentations. Each of the five festivals celebrated by traditional Jewish communities includes a reading of one of the "Five Scrolls"; Esther, for example, is always read at Purim. They're also the only two books in the Bible named after women, for what that's worth.

But here's what I find fascinating about both books: neither of them specifically includes God. 

Oh, He's mentioned briefly in Ruth here and there, but He makes no actual appearances, nor does He play any particular role (except that the laws of the Jewish culture the scenes play out amidst are His). And He literally does not appear in the book of Esther; not once is the Lord's name brought up.

However, the Lord does play a very important role in both stories, and it's the same role He plays in most of our stories as well. It's a much more relatable role, too - I don't know about you, but I've never had God part any bodies of water for me, nor has any prophet ever performed any miracles (and the Lord knows I could use a good miracle cure for my TAM!). But I recognize His appearance in these two books because I see those appearances in my life as well:

The Lord shows up in the books of Esther and Ruth in the role of coincidences. 

Ruth is the daughter-in-law of Naomi, who moved to Moab with her husband Elimelech and her two sons when the famine in Israel got too severe for them. Ruth and another Moabite woman named Orpah (fun fact: this is who Oprah Winfrey was named after, but her mom flipped the letters on the birth certificate!) married the two sons, but both of them (and their father) were killed somehow - Scripture doesn't say, and it's not important to the story. After a stirring speech saying how she won't abandon her mother-in-law, Ruth travels with Naomi back to Israel.

Coincidentally, Naomi's hometown is Bethlehem Ephathrah. When Ruth goes out to "glean" in the fields (pick up after the harvesters, as Mosaic law allows the poor to do), she coincidentally happens to select the field of Boaz, who not only coincidentally happens to be Naomi's nearest kinsman redeemer (well, second nearest, but that's not important right now), but also just happens to be the son of a foreigner himself (Rahab, from Joshua 2) and is thus sympathetic to Ruth's plight. Long story short, Ruth and Boaz end up getting married, having a son, and that son ends up as the grandfather to David, the Goliath-slaying king of Israel and (coincidentally) in the family tree of Jesus Christ.

Esther is chock full of similar "random happenstances" - there just happens to be a vacancy in the king's boudoir, and the young Esther is forced into "auditioning" to be the next consort to the king, which she just happens to win. Meanwhile, her cousin and guardian Mordecai just happens to not only become an enemy to the egotistical right-hand man of the king (Haman), because he doesn't treat him with toady-like deference, but he also just happens to foil an assassination plot on the king early in the story. The push point in the story occurs when Haman decides to do away with Mordecai by getting the king to issue an extermination order to all of "Mordecai's people" (i.e., the Jews), which unbeknownst to both the king and Haman includes Esther as well.

There's an unusually blatant coincidence when Haman gets asked by the king what he should do to celebrate a man who was of great service to the king and had not been properly recognized. Thinking the king meant him, Haman launches into asking for a parade and a robe and the whole nine yards, and then has the rug pulled out from under him when it turns out it was Mordecai the king was planning this for. So in a made-for-sitcom moment, Haman has to do all those things he'd named for his mortal enemy. The climax of the story comes when Esther (having to step up and stop this order to save her people, because coincidentally she became queen for just such a moment) hosts a dinner for the king and Haman where she confronts Haman with her accusation and reveals that she, too, is of Mordecai's heritage. While the king steps out to get the guards to take Haman away, the sniveler tries sniveling to the queen for mercy, and of course just happens to land on top of her, so when the king returns it appears as if he's assaulting the queen on top of his other crimes.

Why do I bring all of this up? Why my sudden obsession with coincidences?

Because for most of us, coincidences are how God manifests Himself in our lives, too.

Look, life in 21st century America - or wherever you're reading this - isn't usually filled with talking burning bushes or folks turning water into wine. But I can testify to the remarkable number of times that God has made a check appear in my mailbox at precisely the time I most needed it, even if I had no idea that a check was en route. I can tell you about how a "hunch" led me to take the scenic way home, and that detour either saved me from a traffic snafu or brought me alongside something or someone I needed to see (or who needed to see me). I've written this very month about the choices of listening material made for me by factors above my pay grade which probably saved my life during bouts of desperation over my failing health.

God isn't averse to doing BIG THINGS once in awhile, even today. Miraculous cancer cures still occur. Donald Trump became president. The Western Bulldogs won the Grand Final.

But far more often, He operates on our scale. Remember, we have a high priest Who was us for awhile. He understands what the power of a small miracle can do for a life.

As my best friend constantly reminds me (her sticky-note is staring me in the face at my desk right now!), Coincidence is just when God remains anonymous.


(But, then again... Who else COULD it be?)

"I don't have a death wish...

...but I'm willing to go Home if I can take a truckload of you Home with me."

Those were Richard Ellis' closing words in his Thursday radio sermon, and they resonated like crazy with me. "I'm tired of this. I'm tired of sin. I don't have a death wish, but I have no objection to going Home..."

And that's how I'm feeling these days. This disease is slowly killing me, and I can't seem to find a way to retire without losing an income source. I don't have all that much time left in any case - either God will bring His Children Home very soon, or this condition will knock me out of the game soon. In the meantime, I'm trying to process how I'm supposed to make it between my cessation of work and the end of the five-month moratorium when the powers-that-govern would finally deign to consider whether or not I'm disabled enough to retire or not.

On top of that, there's the matter of medical insurance to consider. Once I stop working, my medical coverage ceases. Thankfully, I'm not a cancer patient or something else that requires constant medical attention, but I am on twenty pills a day, meds that would cost me about my monthly paycheck each month without insurance. 

I've expressed my frustration with my current teaching position - after a delightful career doing all sorts of good for eager students, I'm spending the last few terms of my career supervising parolees rather than teaching at all. Meanwhile, it exhausts me to do so, and I lose all quality of life with my children or fiancee after a day of teaching, assuming I made it through the school day at all, which ofttimes I don't.

The question becomes, why am I still here? 
However... what if I can't leave?
And...is there any third alternative?

Between light and dark, life and death...

It's been a strange dichotomy, my life over the last couple of months. My health is deteriorating, and four times over the last fortnight I've felt the devil pushing me towards closing up shop: pain, disorientation, or other manifestations of an illness I feel like I can't fight any more. and four times the Lord has held my hand and helped me through the trial, reassuring me that there's more to my life still to come that will make it worth staying and fighting through the misery.

And on the other side of the coin, there's an engagement to my wonderful partner Dana, with a wedding and a new home together planned for June. We spent much of yesterday discussing logistics, while at the same time I feel like my insides were trying to tear me apart. It was a miserable feeling: trying to be positive about the future when I can't conceive of making it to the future at all!

On top of all of this, I'm still completely convinced that the Lord's Return is imminent - my expectation is sometime in 2018, but it's God's timing, not mine. So my planning for this year is - well, difficult, to say the least.

Jesus told us to continue our lives "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage," while we await the Rapture. (Mt 24:38) And hey! I could be completely wrong about the timing: perhaps He won't return this year, or this decade, or even in your lifetime! I made the argument in this article why I believe it cannot be very far off, but that's just my opinion. In the meantime, I have the love of an amazing woman who wants to share whatever portion of my life remains with me. Why would I turn that down?

I did, originally. And I'm still not sure whether it wasn't the right response.

In November of 2016, about a week after the election or so, I broke off our relationship for a very selfish reason. I figured that because I wasn't likely to live very much longer, it would be unfair to burden her with my failing presence in her life. But that wasn't my call to make. It's hers. And she's told me time and time again that she understands the situation, and that she'd prefer to be with me and know what I'm going through and help me through it, rather than not know what I was going through and be constantly concerned for me without any way to help. And I knew that feeling - it was how I felt about Melissa for twenty years, while she was out of my life. Dana's a grown woman; she had the right to make her own decisions.

We reunited in February, and I ("finally") proposed last month, on Christmas. And now, I'm the one who is constantly concerned for me, although my fiancee has been very, very good about taking my condition into account. I'm mostly concerned about two aspects of my health when it comes to the wedding, reception, and move to a new home: my constant fatigue, and my introversion.

My fatigue is nearly constant now - just sitting at my desk this morning has been exhausting, which frustrates me tremendously. How can I handle another move from one house to another? (Answer: lots of friends.) How am I going to make it through a wedding and reception? (Answer: I don't know, but we're going to make it as short and sweet as we can.) And what if I have another introversion attack on the wedding day? (Answer: we'll deal with that if it occurs.) God doesn't give us more than we can handle, so if this is God's Will, then I must assume that I'll have the capability to handle it.

But what if it isn't God's Will?

That's where my concern came from last November: I'm not sure at this point whether the Lord is for or against this union. Certainly He brought Dana into my life for all the good that she has done for me, and since it was through me that she came to the Lord, I've done some good for her as well. But every time I introduce the concept into a plan of action, some sort of impediment seems to crop up - my children vehemently object, I fall into horrific pain or dizziness or fatigue (or introversion), and so forth. It seems so blatant that it's a definite message; what I'm trying to get myself to believe is that it's from the adversary, not the Lord.

What to do? I'm going to follow General Patton's advice. "If it's not necessary to make a decision, it's necessary not to make a decision." As long as I'm not overwhelmed by my failing health at any premature point, I intend to go forward with the wedding plans, keep preparing for and awaiting the Rapture, and continue trying to set an example for my fellow Christians and non-Christians; that is to say, living as Jesus implored us to live - in prayer, in the Word, and in my continued quest to fulfill His Great Commission.

Because now, more than ever, it's imperative that we bring as many of God's potential children Home before it's too late. 

What is illness to the body of a knight errant?

One of the great scenes in Broadway history (IMHO) is the climactic scene in Man Of La Mancha, where Don Quixote was on his death bed, Aldonza and Sancho by his side, and as his memory of his (illusory) knighthood returned, he began to stand...

Don Quixote: "On thy knees to me?"
Aldonza: "My lord, you're not well..."
Don Quixote: "Not well! What is illness to the body of a knight errant? What matter wounds? For each time he falls, he shall rise again! And woe to the wicked! Sancho!
Sancho: "Here, your grace!"
Don Quixote: "My armor! My sword!"....

...and in thirty seconds, he's dead...but dead as a knight errant, not as a demented old man. And that makes all the difference.

I've been fighting a chest cold bordering on pneumonia over the last several days; perhaps that's why I was weak enough to be such a target for the demons pushing me to jump off the bridge last week, I don't know. Knowing I was with my children this past weekend and this week, without my fiancee's help (she was in LA with her grandson), I took it slow and easy all weekend in the hope of saving up energy wherever I could. I had to drive children hither and thither, soccer-mom style, but otherwise I kept things quiet.

Probably too quiet - I didn't write on this blog, nor did I spend any other time writing new material, although I studied quite a bit of Scripture. And I used my illness as the excuse to flag on my duties to the Lord.

Then, as I sat down to write on a different topic altogether just now, the headline you see above emerged unbidden from my fingertips.

("This is God speaking. Can I help you?")

Man Of La Mancha was my second-favorite musical when I was growing up. (West Side Story was and still is first; Camelot was third.) I had a poster of "The Impossible Dream" on my bedroom door as inspiration to keep fighting for what I wanted to achieve. But it's as sterling an example of striving for what God wants us to accomplish for Him as well.

"And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest."

It's not achieving the goal that matters in the end; it's the quest itself that makes it worthy in God's Eyes. Richard Ellis hit this on the head in that life-saving sermon I described last Friday. He concluded with a few sentences that could have simply been aimed at me: You say, But Richard, you don't know what I'm dealing with. It can't be beaten. I'm going to die from it, and God won't save me from it. I say, it's not that you're going to die that is the problem; it's how you face death, how you face that challenge that matters. Will you stand up to your demon, or will you let it defeat you?

If I'm "true to my glorious quest", what matter wounds? What matters pain? What does it matter that I'm not going to "win" in the end? It's the battle that matters to God. It's the character that is built in the battle that matters to the Lord. 

Don Quixote de la Mancha was a delusional old man. He thought that he was a knight errant of the Spanish Realm, a relic of an era that had long passed. The region, of course, knew him as a delusional old man, and his niece and her husband were literally embarrassed by his behavior (so much so that they take action to shock him back to reality in the second act). But some people around him found hope from Don Quixote's nobility. There were two in particular - Sancho, his "faithful servant" (who simply liked him and enjoyed the "misadventures"), and Aldonza, the barmaid-slash-prostitute whom Quixote has mistaken for "my lady Dulcinea" (who comes to adore the reality he sees for her, preferring it to the seedy reality she's lived). To the two of them, Don Quixote has brought joy and his vision to their lives. Did he "win"? Hard to argue that he did. But the battle was what mattered, and his heart undoubtedly lies peaceful and calm.

I'm going to die from this disease eventually, unless Christ returns before that (as I think, hope, and pray He will). But to cut off the fight prematurely is to miss the point of the fight. I must keep fighting the TAM, fighting the disease, fighting for God's Message to be spread while there's still time.

I'll have eternity to rest and recover. But I only have these few months to serve my purpose for the Lord here on earth before He Returns. And He mandates that I use them for Him, not selfishly ditch the fight to avoid the pain. My pain is temporary, but your Hell would be permanent if I don't share the Gospel with the people who need it.

Between Angels And Demons

I feel like I’m in a battle between God and the devil.

Yesterday, I mentioned that the Lord saved me yesterday through music. Today, the demons are after me again. (I’m going to say “the devil” or “the adversary”, although in truth I understand I’m not nearly important enough for Satan himself to mess with. I hope you’ll understand.) That voice is deep inside my head right now, knowing how weak I am.

You see, on Tuesday I tried sleeping at my fiancée’s house in a recliner she has got this very purpose. I’ve slept in it before... but now, my condition has worsened to the point where sleep is increasingly uncomfortable. In an unfamiliar setting, I couldn’t sleep until four.

So I was in bad shape Wednesday. I worked half a day and that’s all I could handle. I came home and tried to sleep. It didn’t work well, but in my own chair I got a little rest... and only four hours the next night. So Thursday, I had no shot. I fell down (into my chair, thankfully) during the pledge, looked at my teaching partner, and emailed my boss that I needed to go home.

And yet...
And yet.

I took extra sleep medicine last night, went to bed early (by ten) after napping a little during the day. I slept solidly for four hours, and couldn’t go back to sleep. Shoot.

So, I’m a mess. And the adversary knows that. The voice is back in my skull, reminding me that my disease will only continue to get worse, that the pain and fatigue would just get worse and worse. The voice assured me that Heaven awaits, that in a moment I could be rid of the disease and the pain would be gone forever.

Today, God’s weapons were His preachers.

If I have time in the morning, I always listen to my two favorite radio preachers: Greg Laurie and Richard Ellis. And today, Laurie’s sermon was rather relevant: what is temptation and where does it come from...and how do you defend yourself against it?

Ellis’ sermon was more blunt: how we can throw a monkey wrench into God’s plans, sabotaging His arrangements through our choices...including and especially through suicide. Ellis made a terribly convincing argument how only God should decide when we leave here. He talked of his mother’s death, one like my mom’s where there is a moment when “you shift from praying for her survival to praying for God to send the bus and take her Home.” But he also said that his mother “crossed the finish line like a champion, and teaching him right through to the end.”

God couldn’t have been more blunt with me if He’d had them say my name when speaking.

All day, I can feel the devil messing with me - papers flying in the wind, emphasizing my weaknesses, and so forth - and the Lord recovering my sanity for me with every attack against “us”. Because it IS a battle in which I have a Partner, One much stronger than any the adversary could ever throw at me. As Paul said in his letter to the Romans (8:31),

31”What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can beⁱ against us?“

The life-saving power of concert band music.

My life was saved today by John Zdeclik.

I’ll explain.

I had a rough night last night. Stayed at my fiancee’s house last night - it was too tired and it was too difficult for me to drive the ten miles home. She has an old recliner in her room for this very situation, knowing I can’t sleep meaningfully on a bed any more. Well, it’s turning out I can’t sleep meaningfully in that old recliner any more, either. Battled it all night - different configurations of pillows, prayers, you name it. Finally got a couple hours at 4 am; alarm went off at six. Up and at ‘em, boy!

So I taught for the morning session, and surprisingly, rather decently. I begged off on the afternoon with my teaching partner. (We only have a handful in there right now, having sent a literal ton to the high school after the New Year.) Intended to go home, climb in my zero-zero-zero chair, and try to make up some of the missing sleep.

I didn’t. Don’t know why.

Instead, I drove (with difficulty) back to Twin Falls and had lunch. Pizza buffet. The perfect meal. While I was driving, I turned on my concert band channel and listened to a couple of my all-time favorite songs to play or conduct or listen to.

“Russian Christmas Music”, by Alfred Reed.
“Variations On A Korean Folk Song”, John Barnes Chance.
“Liturgical Dance”, by the modern genius David Holsinger.
“On A Hymnsong Of Philip Bliss”, also by Holsinger.

And while I was there in Twin, driving towards the majestic bridge that spans the Snake River Canyon, my life was at peace. It was time to end it. The pain and fatigue and dizziness and everything that went with it could all just go away. I would be with Christ momentarily. I had two goodbye letters ready in the car - one for the general public, and a more intimate one for my children on particular. Enough was enough. “I have fought the good fight, and my life was ready to be poured out as a drink offering,” as the apostle Paul would have said. And I’ve always wanted to feel what it was like to go flying off that bridge like a base jumper, sans all that equipment that keeps them alive when they hit the ground. One wonderful five second flight, and then Heaven.

But on my sound system in the car, John Zdeclik’s magical piece, “Chorale And Shaker Dance” came on. It’s a piece based on the “Simple Gifts” melody that most people know well. I’ve played it in high school, conducted multiple arrangements of it with various bands of my own, and even created a marching version of it to base a show around (called “simplicity”, oddly enough).

I know that amazing music by heart. Every note and nuance, from the third clarinet fingerings in the sixteenth note figures in the three measures at rehearsal letter S to where the cues point in the subtle entrances in the mysterious transition before the da capo in measure 124. Every glorious note.

God sent me that music to give me a reason to live.

I couldn’t die with that incredible music in my soul. And especially not while it was playing. So I kept driving.

👂

I’m home now. I’ve slept a couple of hours. I still hurt, I still feel the pain and terrible TAM sensations that bring me to the brink so often (blissfully, not as close as today very often). And I know a day will come when the pain and fatigue and misery from this disease will overcome my will to live, and not even God will be able to stop me without supernatural means.

Or maybe, just maybe...

The power of music is already supernatural means. Especially for an old music teacher.

Is it fair to call it the "Trump Effect"?

While I try to spend my time in this column on Christian topics, the events happening in Washington DC occasionally cannot be ignored. I've expressed my considered opinion that while God is always in charge, He had a very specific reason for placing Mr. Trump in the office of POTUS at this moment in history, and this link and this more recent one will explain it to the uninformed.

But the manner and (lack of) decorum which he brought to the White House has palpably changed the interpersonal vibe between individuals with differing opinions in this nation. There is no middle ground now. I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: several former presidents have expressed their regret that the partisan nature of two-party politics has whittled the "moderate middle" down to virtually nothing in Congress, and in much of political thought in the media and in the culture as a whole. (Former Presidents Clinton, Bush 43, and Carter have all said as much in my hearing, thanks to pre-recording.) George Washington spent his entire Farewell Address pleading with those that came after him not to go down that road; yet the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians did exactly that. The names have changed, the roles have changed, but the battles continue - and in 2018, they're as divided as ever.

But even more than that (as I started to say before wandering on that rabbit trail!), it's the decorum that's gone missing under the influence of a leader who possesses none of it. Courtesy and diplomacy have been replaced by "My nuclear button is bigger than yours" and "she was bleeding out of her...". 

And that seeps into our everyday life. My students are prime examples: conversation with each other or with their elders are indistinguishable for politeness or appropriateness. Word choice is questionable at best. Lying is de riguer. Insubordination is a regular occurrence in my classroom these days, from students whose likely success in their lives ahead diminishes with every poor choice they make.

Which leads to the motivation for this particular melancholy point.

Long before the "election" of our current President (thank you, Electoral college), the "dumbing down" of America had been in full swing. It's unfortunately far too easy to predict the political preference of an American by their apparent educational level, although men and women alike who went to college and absorbed nothing except perhaps beer while there may have to be factored in. When evidence is plentiful and yet one continues to believe a falsehood, it's fair to question the innate intelligence of that person. When logic fails to sway a person from a belief that comes from unknown and questionable sources, that person's belief system can be legitimately questioned. When someone can look at two different people who commit the exact same action and judge them differently because of (fill in the blank: political party, skin color, personal persuasion), their hypocrisy has a root; increasingly, however, it's not so much that it's intentionally malicious as it is a personal blinding to objective reason.

And that lack of self-awareness has transformed the landscape of America. It is the widespread virulent disease form of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the delusion of a person whose intelligence is too low for them to realize that there even exist things they don't know, much less what those things are. Our President, sad to say, is the role model for this. He honestly believes he knows more about everything in existence than everyone else in existence, and is occasionally brought to reality. It's why he refuses all intelligence briefings, preferring to rely on his own innate instincts (and Fox News). Think back to his 2017 conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping, where in ten minutes he learned that he didn't know much after all:

Then Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to his estate at Mar-a-Lago on April 6 — and everything changed. By the president’s own account, as told to the Wall Street Journal, the two men briefly chatted about the history of Chinese-Korean relations. The conversation rocked Trump’s world.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. ... But it’s not what you would think.”

Town (Jenny Town, Johns Hopkins University) called Trump’s approach to North Korea “naive” in our correspondence, and this is a perfect example of what she’s talking about. The president claims to have come to a profound realization about one of the most dangerous conflicts on earth after a 10-minute conversation with the leader of North Korea’s chief patron, which also happens to be the United States’ chief rival in East Asia.

 And that feeling long ago permeated the American populace, perhaps starting in force with the "Me Generation" era of the 1980's, where we were expected to rely on our innate skills and intelligence for the upward mobility of the only person that mattered. (As a Christian, you can probably articulate my rant of a response without my help, so I'll forego it for how. Suffice it to say, God would disagree.) Where it has brought us, in my 35 year career as a teacher which just happens to coincide with the time from that focus on "Me" to now, is the diminishing respect shown for education as a whole and the need for one's own education in particular. 

I have in my classroom as we speak about a half-dozen students (see yesterday's post for a more detailed description). Ostensibly, I am here to do more than just handle the administrative paperwork for them: I have decades of training in math and language arts instruction (admittedly, my music education training is far more advanced, but mostly irrelevant here), and am available at a moment's notice to assist any of these young men on any topic they have in front of them.

I've answered one academic question in two days.

In the meantime, I've dealt with a plethora of motivational conversations, imploring these lost souls to utilize the opportunity they've been given to turn their academic life around and get pointed back in the right direction, towards graduation. However, to be blunt, that doesn't interest any of them. So, rather than being a teacher, I get to be a prison guard instead.

When did school become a four-letter word? (Don't count letters - it's a metaphor.)

When did knowledge, education, and intelligence become dirty words? We look at the statistics about how many doctors and scientists we have to import, how many such students at our major higher ed institutions were coming in from outside the US (until we started making ourselves a pariah and putting out the "not welcome" sign), and bemoan the "brain drain" in this country - but it's exactly what we've strived for over the last few decades! The smart person on television is invariably the "nerd", the awkward dweeb stuck in the corner at the dance while the "cool dudes" who skip class all the time are lauded by their multiple good-looking babes on their arms.

It's far too late to meaningfully reverse these effects, in my opinion, before the Rapture comes and we have far more important issues to deal with (if you're still on the planet at that point). But it would be nice to leave behind a group of people who are able to read Revelation when it becomes relevant to their well-being.

Not that they'll read it then, either. That's too much of a "brainiac" thing to do.

Responsibility

Veteran readers will remember that my "day job" these days is still supervising alternative school students who for whatever reason can't be at the regular high school in our district.

Immediately after a change of semester, we always have a drastic reduction in the size of our population, as many students are sent over to the main campus to continue their education. Either they've "done their penance" for a temporary expulsion for weapons or drugs, or they've demonstrated the ability to attend class regularly and/or complete actual classwork, or caught up with missing classes that prevented them from moving on with their peer group.

The eight young men we have left this January are (ahem) a delightful bunch of children. By definition, they have not demonstrated the above growth, and continue to need our attention here for another semester. During this first week back from vacation, they're acting out about that.

How do we explain what you would think would be patently obvious to a teenager who blatantly refuses to acknowledge their reality?

The argument I just had with an otherwise nice kid about sleeping in class is a prime example. His position, as best I can recreate it, is that "sleeping is not a crime". Which is what he's been doing throughout class the last two days. It feels like I'm trying to convince someone who's holding his breath that "breathing is necessary". Have you ever had that argument with a three-year old? Why-why-why, and there is no end to it? You feel like you'll end up back at the nature of God from the initial question, "Why is that truck red?"

That's how this feels. Why can't I sleep in class? Um...because we have stuff to do? Because you don't get credit for just being here? Because you can't do that at any job or school or whatever? (Short of being a mattress tester, perhaps.) What do you say to the patently obvious?

Yesterday's argument was similar: I can say anything I want any time I want. Um...no, it doesn't work that way. Why not? I have freedom of speech! I can say anything I want! Um... well, ignoring the fact that you're a minor and that right doesn't even apply to you? No, you can't. We give up those kind of rights whenever we enter into a social contract like a classroom situation - but how do you explain a "social contract" to a student who's being so bull-headed that they refuse to stop speaking long enough to even listen to  your explanation?

Alas, that student is home for the day, explaining to his mother and grandfather why he can't say anything he wants.

But while he's home, he's not making any academic progress. Perhaps this is more important, though. Sometimes, we have to teach these kids the basics of life and reality. 

I truly wish I could simply preach Christianity to them. It may not help, if the Holy Spirit isn't ready to overwhelm them, or if they're actively rejecting Him. But it can't be worse than what they're doing now, can it?

Welcome to 2018, possibly our last year on earth, Christians!

I could be completely wrong about the timing of this, of course, but my belief that the Rapture will take place in 3018 is well documented. 

But the Lord told us to keep living our lives until it actually happens. “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the Coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away; so will be the Coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:37-39) Of course, I intend to do my part: I always eat and drink more than I should, and I’m now engaged to be married sometime this summer. 

The key, as the following few paragraphs explain, is to remain FAITHFUL to Christ in both word and deed, not wavering in doubt with His supposed “delay” - the Lord is never early or late; He is always just on time - or losing touch with the Holy Spirit (Mt 24:46-51 and Mt 25:1-13, respectively). And the best way to remain close to God throughout is by reading His Word every single day. 

That’s why I highly recommend “Bible-in-a-Year” for every Believer every single year, no matter how long you’ve been His Child. Every year, no matter how well you think you know the Bible, He always has something new for you - and I increase the odds by consuming Scripture differently each year. I’ve read the Bible in the KJV, the HCSB, and the ESV; this year, I read along with the Max McLean audio Bible. I haven’t started yet today, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to try reading the New Living Translation. It’s the most popular of the ‘modern vernacular’ Bibles, used by the majority of pastors who choose 21st century language to share God’s Word with their parishioners.

My goal is simply to find new depth in my reading of the Bible, and thus new information from God’s writing. If I could read Greek or Hebrew, I’d choose those in a heartbeat. But even if I was to read exactly the same copy of the Bible every year, I’d do it. Think: 1189 chapters! You won’t memorize it in one reading per year. There are sections I know extremely well. (I don’t have very many exact memorizations in my skull, partly because I DO use different versions of the Bible.) Just make sure you READ!

And you don’t have to read left to right, although so far I have every year. Most reading plans alternate between Old and New Testaments, or perhaps help you follow chronologically. Heck, go alphabetically if you want! JUST READ IT! You will be amazed at what you discover. 

What will you learn? Here’s what I think are the most important points that doing this drives home:

1) So many take verses out of context. You cannot do that this way. And you’ll learn WHY in many cases. 

2) You will notice how the same thoughts, the same themes recur repeatedly. The more He points something out, the bigger a deal it is. 

3) After a few readings, you might finally discover the truth about the Bible: every single book, chapter, verse, word, is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

Good luck, my friends. Be prepared. He is Coming Soon. 

New Year's Eve, 2017

This is post number 253 of this calendar year, and the 362nd of the (most recent) lifespan of the Act II Ministries blog. Over the course of December, there haven't been many new posts, as we were busy not just with Christmas but with the process of producing and starting to market the collection, "Selected Essays: Act II Ministries 2016-17", now in spiral bound book form and available from this website for a donation of $12 or more. Contact us through the comments for more information, or send your donation to the address on the blogsite with your own contact information so we can ship a copy to you ASAP. [Officially, it's my eleventh book published, with its companion "Selected Stories: Act II Ministries 2016-17", a collection of more personal tales printed in this blog, being the twelfth. I'm thinking of printing up a calendar with all twelve covers commemorated for my own use, as a manifestation of my still-extant sinful pride.] By the way, $12 covers the cost of production and mailing fairly precisely. We've no intention on profiting on this unless God says otherwise.

The other item that's kept me busy during the past week in particular is having proposed to the lovely and talented Dana, about whom I have spoken often and lovingly. It is to her infinite credit that I've learned to love to this extent again, after the death of my "soul mate" and partner in this ministry venture, Melissa Smith, three years ago this month. Dana, you are my last love, and the woman I want to be with when we are taken up by Christ when He splits the eastern sky.

Which brings me to the topic of this final post of 2017.

What would you do during 2018 if you knew it was going to be your last year on earth?

I'm very serious about this question, for many reasons. Those reasons don't matter right now. What would you DO? If I could guarantee that you had no more than twelve months - that you wouldn't be here to celebrate New Year's Rockin' Eve 2019 with Ryan Seacrest and the corpse of Dick Clark - would you live your remaining life differently?

The pat answer, of course, is that we are to live every day as if we could die tomorrow, but that's impractical beyond belief. The closest actual advice I've ever heard on this topic that was functionally useful was to plan like you'll live forever, and live like there's no tomorrow.

But generally, we don't do even that. 

This is not your standard "Carpe Diem!" post. This is a serious admonition that the End is Almost Here. If you've followed my writing over the last fifteen months, or really just the last few months (and God bless you if you have, as erratic a poster as I've been given my failing health!), then you know where I'm coming from.  

All the signs are in place for the "Rapture of Christ's Church" in the imminent future. There are no longer any more "signs" necessary, nothing else needed before the Son of Man appears without warning and snatches up the smaller-than-commonly-expected number of Believers from the surface of this world and takes us Home. 

We use the word "snatches" because Jesus Himself told us it would be sudden. Here is part of the Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24 (verses 15-19) →

15“So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, 18and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. 19And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days!

Several things to note here. 

"The abomination that causes desolation" is the final step in the countdown to the rapture, the only one left. What that may be is unclear. Many have speculated it to be something about the not-yet reconstructed Third Temple, but at this point that seems a wistful dream at best. More likely, it's some desecration of an already-extant holy site; in my mind, the Western Wall is the obvious candidate. Regardless, when it happens, it's too late to be saved and catch the first train out of town! Verses 16-19 make it clear there won't be a delay after that for us to "catch our breath" or "pack our bags". (What would you possibly want to pack to go to Heaven?)

"Let the reader understand" - is not added later, but is part of the original quotation. Jesus is expecting His Words to be written down and passed on to future generations. That seems an amazingly profound thought for Jesus to have at the moment.

"Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants" - Here's a thought some of you may not have come across. Jesus says on many occasions that to enter into Heaven, we must be like them: staying in Matthew, here's 19:14 →

14but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” 


For to such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven! So not only will the children GO to Heaven, they'll OWN it! So, undoubtedly, the children below a certain age (presumably the age where that child can make a consenting choice) will be taken up unconditionally. Alas for pregnant women and those nursing infants indeed! If they're not saved, their child will be snatched up without them! (I'm assuming that you realize: no matter what our governments may say, to God those babies within their mothers' wombs are already living human beings worthy of salvation. Psalm 139:13 → 

 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

As the memesters would say, "Your argument is invalid"!) 

I've written about the impending Rapture before. God has pressed me to talk about it non-stop for the next however-many months we have left. So, that's the primary reason I have for stressing this immediacy issue.

But personally, I have a second one: my health is steadily deteriorating to a frightening level.

Since six months ago, I've lost a great deal of stamina and develop pain much faster. It takes more medication to beat that pain back, and I've had to add three medicines to my daily regimen. While I've been able to stay on the job officially, long-time readers know it's only through the tireless efforts of my teaching assistant Wendy that I'm able to survive day to day (and even so, I can't generally make it through more than three days in a week). Unfortunately, I've recebtly learned that in order to retire on disability from our state's school system and earn disability retirement payments, I have to be off the payroll for five months before even the first test of my ability or inability will be made.

Screw that. God's coming sooner than that! I'm currently planning to just keep teaching until He Returns or until I drop! This is another "Holy Spirit" thing, understand: it's going to be a race to see if I live long enough to see the Rapture, or if the pain gets to me first.

So, for me, it becomes very simple. 2018 will be my last year on the planet, and frankly I can't wait to get to Heaven! 

BUT.... what am I supposed to do with the time left to me here?!?

God didn't leave me here "accidentally", any more than He left YOU here "accidentally". What are we supposed to do to help encourage the lost to come to Christ in these last few months? For me, this blog is an important venue, and I'm pledging to try and post something every day until the End. (I don't make "New Year's Resolutions" generally, because having spent my entire life in the school system, I don't think of January as the "new year"! I've always made those resolutions in August. This year, however, warrants an adjustment.)

I also need to focus this blog in more on the essentials: the salvation of the lost (both the ones reading the blog and the ones you may have in your lives and want to help save) and the urgency of the issue.  The rest of my duties, like always, start from listening to God in prayer and interpreting what He wants me to do. That's not always easy for me to do. Like most pray-ers, I tend to bring my own desires into the prayer circle, when I need to listen more carefully. 

What about you? What do you find God is leading you towards in 2018? Don't waste a DAY of the time you have left, because there aren't very many!    

A lesson from Paul

Today, I had to pray for the spirit of fear to be taken away.

I suffered from a sudden attack of introversion, paranoia, and confusion. It was a remarkably scary day - I couldn’t even look my beautiful Dana in the eye.

What else can one do then, but pray?

Pray for God to take away that spirit of fear, and replace it. “For this reason,” Paul told Timothy, “I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God...for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2nd Timothy 1:6-7)

That doesn’t mean He made it easy on me. It was a struggle the entire day, and I lapsed back into paranoia at about 7 pm. But He strengthened me enough that I was able to survive a school day with my alternative students, as well as a meeting with the administration over next semester’s plans.

The moral? Well, there are a few, I suppose.

Trust God. That’s the first and most obvious and necessary one.

And more than that, ASK Him for what you need. Don’t assume that just because He knows what you need, He’s simply going to give it to you without your asking for it. Remember the scene in the Disney movie Aladdin, when Ali is thrown into the ocean and the genie tells him he’s got to SAY the wish before the genie can grant it? Yeah, God’s a little like that.

But even more than that, it’s like how He wants us to pray for our DAILY bread - not a month’s supply all at once, but to keep coming back for what we need daily. Well, God will provide what we need to make it... but perhaps ONLY what we need to make it. He knew how much help I did and didn’t need to make it through the day.

Christ never said life was going to be easy. But He did say it was going to be worth it.

Dana was admiring how I make it through each day given all the health challenges God has entrusted me with, and how she didn’t think she could stay as upbeat as I do fighting as much pain as I fight. But the truth is, we are all given our crosses, and He makes sure they’re never more than we can bear... but also that they’re not so light as to be meaningless, either.

Remember, His purpose for us remaining on this planet (in part) is to develop us into the most Christ-like beings we can become. And that happens through challenges, challenges that develop our character. So, as much as we all would like to shout, “That’s as much character building as I can take, Lord!”, the trust is that He knows EXACTLY how much we can and should take.

That’s why despite the fact that there have been several nights when my pain has been so bad I thought about short-cutting my way Home... I’m still here.

He hasn’t figured wrong yet, and He probably won’t. If I do short-cut some day, then I’ll probably be the one who was wrong, and I could have made it through.

After all, I’ve made it through every test so far.

America's Role in the Upcoming Tribulation Has Just Been Defined.

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” - First Corinthians 1:18

The Republican-controlled Senate passed a ridiculously unpopular tax code change in the middle of the night last week, after their ridiculously unpopular attacks on the health care system in the middle of previous nights had failed.

You might look at those decisions and wonder why they would figuratively slit their own throats, reducing their own re-election possibilities so drastically by pushing such draconian and voter-provoking measures. I look at the rest of what the Grand Ol’ Party is doing in the fields of voter suppression, media suppression, and literal doublespeak, and realize that they may very well control the outcome of the next election before it ever occurs, regardless of what laws they pass.

It’s been suggested by many that the path this administration is waltzing down so confidently is similar to what Hitler and Nazi Germany did in the 1930s to secure and consolidate power: control all communication, create us-against-them mentalities, and so forth. At most, I think it’s a weak reflection of the Third Reich’s methods - call it Nazi Lite, if you wish.

But what they’re doing does have a purpose, one ordained by God when He arranged for Mr. Trump’s election in 2016. Never doubt that God is still in complete control. Of course He chose this president, as He chose every other leader in history. I wrote about the Lord’s choice of Mr. Trump here several months ago.

I’ve also written before about the Biblical End Times, and the fact that we are now within twelve months of their launch point: the rapture of Christ’s Believers, in my opinion. (My estimation could be significantly off; I know better than to predict a solid date because “no man may know the day or hour” - Matthew 25.)

And I’ve discussed the fact, a profoundly disturbing fact to the egotistical nation that we are, that the United States has NO explicit role in the End Times. We are not mentioned in any manner, not even as “great power from over the sea” or anything like that. We are not a player in the End Game.

But I’m starting to see a possible niche for our nation in the script that Christ’s written in Revelation, a role in the play eschatologists have been studying for centuries and that’s about to play out in real life. Unfortunately, it’s not a particularly joyful one, nor is it a feature part.

Hear me out.

♰

As we come closer and closer to the Rapture, Scripture says that the Holy Spirit will gradually withdraw from the people of the earth - this is Second Thessalonians 2:6-8…

“And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only He who now restrains it will do so until He is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed…”

That capital “He” is the Holy Spirit, or God within us. The Spirit is what has held back much of the evil which the devil has wanted to push upon the people of God’s planet. (Oh, did you think that this was as bad as Earth could get? If you fail to catch the first train out with the rest of Christ’s Believers, you’ll find out just how bad it can get!)

We see the GOP’s government as a remarkably stark example of this - not only the policies themselves, which are heinous enough, but the outright lies and contradictory statements they’ve used to delude. The fact that they are using the evangelical right as a shield is right out of Scripture’s playbook:

“And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold…” - Matthew 24:10-12

When our leaders betray us and encourage hatred of those who are different, and people see the ‘false prophets’, those hiding under the umbrella of the church but preach hatred and neglect of the needy, blatantly contradicting the Beatitudes and Christ’s teachings… you can see why “many will fall away”. “The church is a lie”, they will say. “They’re as rotten as the rest.” And “the love of many will grow cold” when they come to believe that there isn’t a God to rely on for goodness.

(But there IS a loving, reliable God. Never forget that.)

As I’ve documented elsewhere, I believe that the evidence suggests that the Rapture of the true followers of Christ may very happen within the next twelve months. I’ve seen no reason to renege on that forecast, and every reason to confirm it. (Did you see that Saudi Arabia just granted citizenship to an artificial intelligence? Whenever God calls time on the world, it’s going to be before the merging of humanity and its creations, the so-called “singularity” that we’re heading for in the next 20-30 years.)

Once that happens, says the Bible, a new-ish world leader will immediately emerge who will unite the world against the ills that seem to have befallen it. Like our administration and any authoritarian government does, this leader may choose to invent foes to unite against.  Notice that the US, because of the actions, the policies, and (let’s be frank) the lack of policies of its administration, has suddenly cast itself as the “lone outcast”, a pariah to be shunned by the rest of the world - but because of the sheer economic and military power we possess, we cannot safely be ignored.

So, we will become what the rest of the world will unite against.

Mr. Trump even pulled an obvious Biblical trigger on Wednesday when he announced that the US would become the only nation in the world to recognize Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israel. Ironically, while that puts us on the right side of Scripture for once, it’s such a huge political mistake that it almost can’t help but trigger the devil’s tripwires.

The Bible, of course, told us this would happen when the End came:

“Behold, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples….On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it.” - Zechariah 12:2-3

How fitting if the rhetoric of every nation rallying against this decision, either in Muslim outrage or in political fear of Muslim outrage, is what unites the globe against us! Then, in the moment that millions (NOT billions - the number of faux Christians far exceeds the number of real ones!) of Believers vanish inexplicably, the planet will be sent into a temporary chaos that most eschatologists believe the Anti-Christ (i.e., the new-ish emerging world leader) will somehow be able to explain away sufficiently to those who don’t know their Scripture.

No, Mr. Trump is not the Anti-Christ.

He is to be the foil of the Anti-Christ.

Mr. Trump will be to this emerging world leader what Kim Jong-Un is to him: a less savvy mark that he can bully and rally his people against. If you think about it, perhaps America becoming a pariah for an emerging world government run by the devil’s chosen Anti-Christ may not be such a terrible thing! Unfortunately, if we have to live through the GOP’s America in the meantime, it won’t be a particularly pleasant alternative for most of us.

I’ve written about this before: God placed Donald John Trump in the presidency, as he did Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush, and for that matter every other president, premier, chancellor, prime minister and world leader in history. And it’s looking more and more like he is fulfilling precisely the role God placed him there to perform.

What seems more and more apparent is that by relegating our own nation to the sidelines during 2017, we have played out our Biblical role to perfection. The United States of America is about to become an afterthought, as the planet unites to begin the 3½ not-so-bad years and the 3½ terrible, catastrophic, nearly unsurvivable years of the Great Tribulation, ending in the Second Coming, the Return of Jesus Christ as King, and the literal end of human society and even life as we’ve known it.

“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.” - Matthew 24:21-22

In seven years plus maybe six to twelve months (more or less, or however many we have left), every knee will bend, and every knee will bow. Every person on the planet will either begin spending eternity in Hell or begin a new eternal existence with our Lord and Savior when the New Heaven and the New Earth appear.

♰

And this all sounds crazy to you, doesn’t it? The foolishness of a madman, you might say. The prayers of a fellow who’s so sick that he’s grasping at straws, hoping to be caught up to Heaven before he passes away conventionally of his illness. And in one sense, you’d be right. I agree with John:

“He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” - Revelation 22:20

What evidence do I have? Well, I have the Holy Spirit.

And I have a book. The Book.

That Book is the most reprinted, most read text on the planet. 1189 chapters, by forty human authors spread out over two thousand years, all guided by God’s Hand. And fully one-quarter of the material is prophecy: hundreds of pages of predictions, when you add it all up. Of that enormous quantity, every single prophecy so far has come true.

And this isn’t like Nostradamus, made up of vague phrases you can bend to mean almost anything and yet often they still make no sense. These are specific descriptions: the rise and fall of Alexander the Great, described in such detail in Daniel 11 that later skeptics argued it had to have been written after the fact (until earlier copies were discovered to prove its veracity); the precise tiny village (Bethlehem Ephrathah) where the birth of the Messiah would take place, known even then by Herod, the wise men and others awaiting His birth in Micah 5; and so forth. The Bible has been proven to be accurate with every prediction it’s ever given us, and the last unfulfilled prophecies are coming precisely true as we speak.

The countdown is nearly complete. Virtually all of the prerequisites for the rapture have happened. I could be completely off in my forecast of when Christ will call His elect Home - the Bible is inerrant, but I’m certainly not! It might be a few years from now, or maybe even twenty years down the road. It could be tomorrow. But it’s coming very soon, certainly within most of your lifetimes.

♰

There will be three roads that you can take.

Road One is by far the best option, and Romans 10:9-10 details it best:

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

Unfortunately, many people do the second without doing the first: they believe that Jesus is indeed God (which is the implication of believing in His Resurrection), but they don’t follow Him as LORD of their lives, meaning they don’t live by His Words. Be sure that you do BOTH. Many so-called “Christian” churches in 2017 fall under that “false prophet” label discussed earlier in this article, trying to make it seem easier than it is to be an actual Christian. (That's why it'll be "millions", not "billions". Tragically.)

Going to church is not a guarantee of salvation. Having Jesus and the Holy Spirit inside you is.

These people will miss the entire show. Without warning, someday soon (I believe in 2018 sometime, as I’ve said), the true Christians will be taken up to Heaven without the inconvenience of dying:

“But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the End, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father…” - First Corinthians 15:23-24

But that last sentence is Road Two, which may be considered the “null” option, or the “complicit” option. Just go along with whatever the culture and the majority of the world tells you to do.

When the Believers leave, you’ll be told that it was some other kind of phenomenon - electromagnetic, perhaps, or some secret weapon of ‘the enemy’. I’ve no idea; frankly, I’m extremely curious what the Anti-Christ will tell you. But you’ll believe it, because it’s easier that way. And they’ll come together into a one-world government, and one-world economy, and that will be nice in its way.

Even when things get ugly a few years down the road, they won’t get ugly for you, because you’ve got the Mark of the Beast on your right hand (or maybe your forehead), which is how you can buy things in the new economy. Unfortunately, the Bible warned us that that mark is the Devil’s “branding” of you: he has bought you, and disqualified you from salvation. So when Christ comes at “the End, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father,” only then will you understand that you were playing on the wrong team the entire time.

Only at the end, when He casts the devil and everyone who ‘went along with it’ into Hell, will you understand that Jesus Christ is God, that He is Lord, and He was to be obeyed rather than ignored.

Road Two has a very, very bad ending.

Road Three is the most difficult. Once the Rapture happens, Road One isn’t an option any more. You’re living in the Anti-Christ’s world now. However, if you realize this soon enough (and anytime in the first 3-4 years or so should be soon enough, before the “Mark of the Beast” is implemented for all commerce), you can still end up in Heaven instead of Hell.

How?

Step 1: Recognize that the Bible was right. If you remember ANYTHING about the Bible’s version of the End, and you notice millions of people disappear, immediately followed by the emergence of a new world government and leader, I really hope you can figure this part out yourself.

Step 2: Resist. That doesn’t mean you have to go “Rambo” on the world. But it does mean doing what you can to find out everything about the End Times from Scripture, and do whatever you need to in order to avoid falling in with the enemy’s camp. Even if it means…

Step 3: If necessary, die. That’s right. If you can survive all seven years without surrendering to the Anti-Christ, congratulations! But the other way to escape to Heaven during the Tribulation is to die as a martyr. That just means that if the solution to not falling into the enemy’s clutches is to be killed, don’t be afraid of it. You’ll die as a ‘saint’, and you’ll literally wake up a moment later in Heaven. (Revelation promises this, in chapter 6 and elsewhere.) Scary, I know. And you’ll have to endure a lot before that moment, undoubtedly. But in the (eternally) long term, it’s much better than Road Two.

♰

To summarize: The End Is Coming. Quickly. As a nation, we are “doomed” to the sidelines, but that’s immaterial to us as Christians (and perhaps even advantageous).

We must do whatever we can to make sure that not only will WE be safely on Road One, but that everyone we can influence will be there as well.

Non-Christians: find a Believer and let them help you, disciple you. (Read the back entries in our Act II Ministries blog or our new Selected Essays book for our help, but you’re really going to want a live person’s guidance as well.) Don’t wait! Time is short - Do it NOW!

Christians: Yes, you need to start being that annoying person who won’t leave your friends alone about Christ! If they were standing on the railroad tracks when a train was coming, you’d pester them non-stop until they were saved, wouldn’t you? Isn’t this even more crucial? DON’T leave anyone behind if you can help it!

Thank you for reading, thank you for believing, and thank you for sharing. May God be with each of you.