Welcome to a brand new year!! It’s hard to imagine that it’s 2025. This will be the year – Lord willing – that I enter my 58th year. Oh, the things I’ve seen in 58 years! Those who are older have seen much more. As I thought about this, some things came to mind:
April 4, 1968. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Riots began throughout the nation.
July 20, 1969. I remember watching this at grandma and grandpa’s. Yes, I was only 2 and the memory is tiny, but I can tell you where I was at when I saw this on their old black and white television.
August 8, 1974 – President Nixon resigned.
November 18, 1978 – The Jim Jones mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. This is where the phrase “don’t drink the Kool-Aid” originates.
November 4, 1980 – President Reagan is elected. The actor turned politician gave some of the best speeches and soundbites that have endured through the years.
January 1, 2000 – Y2K. Do you remember this and the number of people who were in a panic that the infrastructure of the world was going to collapse as computer locked up with a date of 010100? And what happened? Nothing!
September 11, 2001 – 9/11 as it is better known. Where were you when you heard the news? Nothing in the world has been the same since.
August 29, 2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans.
December 30, 2006 – Saddam Hussein is executed.
May 2, 2011 – Osama bin Laden is killed.
November 8, 2016 – Real estate developer and television personality Donald J. Trump is elected as president.
March, 2020 – COVID. Need we say more? Again, this was a world-changing event. Restrictions and mandates were placed on us. While level heads were deemed conspiratorial, articles have come out recently stating that 1) COVID DID originate in a Wuhan lab, 2) social distancing and masking were NOT based on science, and 3) we were told “trust the science” and if you didn’t, you were anti-government and didn’t care for anyone around you. A subcommittee just released their findings, stating that there is “no conclusive evidence” that wearing masks protected Americans from COVID-19.1 I think some of us were saying that the whole time and we sure got vilified for it!
During the past 58 years, we have seen the inventions of the PC, iPhone, the Internet, Amazon, Google, and a whole lot more advancements in technology and social media.
Doesn’t it make you wonder what could change in this year? One thing is definitely a possibility. This could be the year of the Rapture. Could be… I’m not making predictions.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 says, “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. (14) For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. (15) For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. (16) For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: (17) Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (18) Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”
Prophetically, it doesn’t seem that there is anything left to be fulfilled before Jesus would return in the clouds to call His children home. So, then, what’s keeping Him? Just HIS will and timing, something that He chose not to share with us. Instead, the Lord left us with some important reminders that we should be thinking about as we enter this new year.
2 Timothy 4:8 Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.
Titus 2:13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Revelation 22:20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
1https://www.foxnews.com/politics/covid-most-likely-leaked-from-wuhan-lab-social-distancing-not-based-science-select-committee-finds?msockid=0a935ff4180860c41d164ab319a2611c
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