Tuesday, January 16, 2018
As you are reading this blog today, what some of you were hoping wouldn’t happen, obviously just did. I am referring to the arrival of possibly the strongest cold front of the year. I know, there may be one or two of you out there who may be jumping for joy because you love cold weather. I used to be in that group. Now, it’s the other way around. Why? C’mon family, you know my well-worn corny line: “When you get old, you get cold!” This time the weather forecast was correct but it is good to keep in mind that what the weatherman says is going to happen doesn’t always happen. In fact, just a week or two ago after a notable earthquake, prognosticators in many places warned folks about a tsunami that never arrived. Man’s percentages have greatly improved but they are still far from 100 percent accurate. Not so with God. When He says something is coming, you can bet that it will arrive.
Perhaps last night or early this morning, you noticed a rattling at your window, or heard your wind chimes playing loudly, or looked outside and the trees were bending dramatically. Yep, the expected cold front arrived. When I see the arrivals of weather fronts throughout the year, I often think of one expected event I may get to see before the Lord calls me home. I am on the lookout for it but if I don’t get to see it, it’s quite possible that some of you will. Here’s what I’m looking for: (1) Someone calling out my name out loudly from Heaven. If not that, then the collective call for all God’s children who will be living at the time. (2) The voice of the archangel of God. (3) A loud trumpet blast like no other trumpet sound I’ve heard before. (4) The souls of God’s children who died before flying up to Heaven. Why am I looking for that? I look for it because the Bible says it will happen. In describing the Rapture, the Lord coming to take His children upward, I Thessalonians 4:16, reads: “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.” The meteorologists’ forecasts don’t always come to be but you can bet that this one I just described will. If God says it will happen, it most definitely will.
I suppose some of you heard or were involved in the chatter earlier this week concerning today’s cold front. Almost everyone agreed and said “its coming”. Today, everybody, whether happily or grudgingly, said “it’s here.” In the same manner, our conversation often, as God’s children, includes chatter about the day of our Lord’s return. Although all Christians believe that day will come, there are some who think it, it will just be an invisible or spiritual advent. Not so! On the day Jesus left His disciples to return to the Father, they saw Him taken up to Heaven in a cloud and then disappear. As they continued gazing into the sky, two men dressed in white appeared and said to them: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11) They saw Him go up, we will see Him come down. Concerning Christ’s return, we’ve been saying for years “its coming”, and on that glorious day we will all ecstatically shout “its here!”
God’s word for today: (2 Timothy 4:8) “Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
