I Wish We'd All Be Ready

Have you been following the story of a Christian group spreading the word that Judgment Day is almost here? I had missed that particular story until my daughter had read it on Yahoo. “What did I think about that?” she wanted to know. Well, I hadn’t thought about it because I hadn’t heard about it. I had to admit it sounded like something I should hear about, especially since the Rock Group, our Sunday School Class, is just beginning to study Revelation (I might say at their request, not mine).

I had almost forgotten about the May, 2011 date when the headline surfaced on the Drudge Report. It was again brought to the surface of my thinking, so I read the article. I didn’t have much time to thoughtfully consider it as I quickly scanned the article, noting it quoted the scripture, Matthew 24:36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” I nodded because that is my standard answer when I hear those kinds of predictions.

Still, we have just come through the Christmas season when everyone nearby except a very few missed the Lord’s birth because it didn’t look like what they expected--did not fit their theology. Whatever is going on, I don’t want that to happen to us as it did to them.

For some inexplicable reason, I found myself watching the History Channel’s shows about the Doomsday Clock, the Mayan calendar that seems to predict a great global upheaval on December 21, 2012, and the writings of Nostradamus, a 16th century “seer” who wrote “quatrains” and seems to indicate catastrophic events for earth, possibly by a comet in or before 2012.

My secretary had asked me what I thought about that a couple of months ago. Today, a coworker asked me why I, particularly, would watch such shows as surely I knew that none of us could possibly know such dates.

I quickly agreed with her about Matthew 24:36 (mentioned above) and assured her that I did indeed know that scripture and did indeed believe it.

However, I did have to throw into the mix, Amos 3:7 “Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.“ So, I said further that the difficulty as I see it is recognizing WHO the prophets are and which voices are false prophets. What kind of people can God use? Remember Nebuchadnezzar?

I bring up this whole topic in the blog and in conversations because I want everyone (including me) to consider our ways, to evaluate our priorities, to genuinely seek to understand God and His plan in our lives. It is so easy to get caught up in our humdrum but frantic lives that we may acknowledge God on Sunday mornings, while the rest of the week is spent dealing with our wants at best and with our urgents at the worst.

Okay, this is long enough today. Perhaps tomorrow I will give the whole topic more prayerful consideration and continue the discourse. Perhaps, you should too.

♫“Life was filled with guns & war
And everyone got trampled on the floor
I wish we'd all been ready
Children died the day grew cold
A piece of bread could buy a bag of gold
I wish we'd all been ready
There's no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you've been left behind.

A man &wife sleep in bed she hears a noise
And turns her head he's gone
I wish we'd all been ready
Two men walking up a hill one disappears
And One's left standing still
I wish we'd all been ready
There's no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you've been left behind
There's no time to change your mind
How could you have been so blind
The father spoke the demons died
The Son has come & you've been left behind.”♫
by Larry Norman