Early morning.  Storms have battered the island for the past two days.  Monk has lit the candles and is sipping grog.  A knock on the door.

   Brother Monk, are you awake?

   Yes.  Just waking up.

   Missed you in the dinning hall, so I brought you some bread and eggs and some rather strong coffee.  We have all heard of your letters!

   Thank you, brother monk.

   Here, let me help you get settled.  Yes, your ink and quill, just over there?  Right.  Well, I best be going.  See you at vespers?  By the way, this little book from America came yesterday addressed to you. 

  Thank you ever so much, brother monk.

  I wonder who knows of me so far away, in America, and why they would send this little book?  Let’s see now; well, bless me Lord, it appears to be a book of daily devotionals, “Our Daily Bread.” 

  As he thumbs through the pages, he happens upon an entry dated May 28, 2012, titled, “The Gathering.”  He is quiet.  Then a great roar of joy:

  Glorious Jesus, my Savior; someone in America has received one of my letters and responded!  Well, I never dreamed….

   That’s it!  I shall share its contents and add my thoughts.  Yes, there it is then.  Letter upon letter as the ebb and flow of the tides…

   The Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd us and lead us to living fountains of water. -Revelation 7:17

   During Oswald Chambers’ service as a YMCA chaplain in Egypt (1915-1917), he touched the lives of many soldiers who died in  World War I.  On November 6, 1916, Chambers wrote in his diary: “We have a letter from  New Zealand friend telling us that Ted Strack has been killed.  And so Ted Strack has ‘gone to be with Jesus.’  That is just how he would have put it…He was a rough beauty of nature and of grace, a fearless, loveable little saint.  Thank God for every remembrance of him…So they are gathering one by one.”

   From the first century of our Lord Jesus until today and beyond, Jesus has been gathering the saints (true believers in Jesus Christ), their souls at death, one by one to Himself in heaven.  There they are gathered together with all those souls who have passed on before in death, one by one by one, not all at the same time, but in His time, one by one: countless billions of souls/spirits there now waiting for us!  What a revelation: the gathering before the Rapture is, as the Lord has determined, “ONE BY ONE,” even as it was yesterday, so it will be today and tomorrow, until the day of the “Rapture!”  

   That great event is still future, and perhaps sooner than we think.  But when that great event happens, the next great event in human history, the Lord Jesus will come out of heaven at the trumpet roar, just above the clouds, and gather the dead and living unto Himself-not ‘one by one,’  but all together and at the same time, where, gathered together to Him in the air, we shall follow Him up to heaven: and so so shall we ever be with the Lord! 

  Let us praise God Almighty for His great plan of salvation in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, The Messiah.  What a plan! What a God we have.  Even so, come Lord Jesus.  Amen