WHAT WOULD YOU DO KNOWING YOU WERE DYING?

Last week was full of surprises.  Not good ones either.  First, I received a call from my nephew that they'd taken my brother to the hospital by ambulance as he had taken a turn for the worse in his battle with coronavirus.  Days later, a best friend of my wife's called to say she had been diagnosed with cancer.  Not good.  

One week later there is good and bad to report. My brother bounced back from his issues. Most likely he was dehydrated from taking prednisone.  Doctors put him on antibiotics and gave him a couple days of oxygen.  That seemed to stem the tide.  He's doing fine now.  About ready to poke his head out in public...somewhat.  Joanne's friend had some tests ran early this week and it looks like stage 4 cancer.  The calls between the two of them have been many.  As you might expect, when one hears cancer, fear sets in.  Stage 4 doesn't help.  Certainly you have to think that time is nearing.  Heck, as sick as my brother was, that thought was running through many in our family. 

So given situations like these....what would you do?  After the initial shock, how would you live out the rest of your life?  Just to remind you....not everyone gets to plan.  Some times you are gone in an instant.  Let's say though, you do have an opportunity to live things out.  Would you take a trip to some place you always wanted to go?  Buy some expensive toy, something you never thought you'd be able to own in a million years.  Or would you set out to see where family and friends are in their walk with God.   Just to make sure they know where they're going.  After all, you want them with you don't you?

Or would you look to be a seed planter?  Would you see yourself in a great situation to be able to tell people about God and how important he is to their own salvation. Our would you crawl up on the couch on let time run its course.  There are a plethora of things you could do.  These are just a few that came to my mind.      

You need to keep looking up....

Now, let's put a different spin on things.  If you look around you, it's obvious that prophecy is playing itself out.  Minute by minute.  We are closer now than ever before of Jesus returning to this earth.   So, are we on borrowed time, so to speak.  Aaaaah, yes.  And it that's the case, shouldn't we look at it the same as one would if they knew their life was coming to an end?  Again, I say yes.  

Perhaps this will put into perspective: 

"And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of wht is coming on the world.  For the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.  Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near".-Luke 21:25-28  

YGG,

John

 

SOUNDING THE ALARM

"The British are coming, the British are coming".  I can hear those words as distinctly now as the first time I heard them in World History as a teenager.  That was a long time ago.  Actually both were a long time ago.

We've been told for quite some time now, that it was Paul Revere's historic ride through the streets of Concord hollering a warning that sounded the alarm.  In fact, he didn't even make it to Concord.  Revere, an activist in the Patriot movement and two other men, Samuel Prescott and William Dawes rode that night.  They had every intention of going the full route to Concord, but all three were arrested after leaving Lexington and were detained by a British patrol.  

HERE'S WHAT YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW:  Revere's ride never happened the way we thought it did.  Prescott was the first to escape capture.  He ultimately made it all the way to Concord to warn residents to protect ammunition and weapons stored in a hidden depot outside of town.  Dawes later escaped and by all accounts got lost in the woods.  Revere was eventually released but without his horse in tow.  He walked back to Lexington to find the city in battle on the Lexington Green.  He had been in custody when the first shots were fired.  The British are coming, the British are coming",  never came from the lips of Revere.  He did however warn residents of the invasion before hitching a horse for the ride to Concord that never concluded.      

Or how about this one?  The day was December 7, 1941.  Two U.S. servicemen were manning a radar station on Oahu and despite reporting their sighting of a huge blip on their screen were ignored.  PEARL HABOR.  A name that will live forever all because the alarm wasn't taken serious. Years later the real truth of who had tried to sound the call came to the surface. They are not household names but they well should be.  Here they are: Joseph Lockard and Kermit Tyler.   

So, where is this all going you say?  Lockard and Tyler might have wisdom of the question.  LOOK UP!!  If you're not following our world's happenings then perhaps the best alarm possible can't wake you up.  We are getting closer than ever now.  Jesus is returning soon.  I simply can't say it any way other than that. If you won't believe me try these words from the Book of Knowledge.   

"Behold, a day is coming for the LORD, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst.  For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped.  Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city.  Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle.  On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward.  And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal.  And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah.  Then the Lord my God will come, and the hold ones with him"...-Zechariah 14:1-21 

The Alarm has been sounded.  How will you react?  It's up to you......

YGG,

John