As a Christian, what can we say about this year? To the world of man, Christians and Jews are despised. Yet you should not be surprised, when all the world despises you; for the world despised the Son of God, and He has been raised up! The enemy of our faith has raised up false teachers who were born to be deceivers and themselves are being deceived! For what seems like the end days of the Church Age, the Age of Grace whereby God, the Father is calling people everywhere, both Jews and Gentiles by the Holy Spirit to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. To the end for the forgiveness of sins in true repentance unto eternal life with GOD forever! All that come to Jesus in faith will never be lost. Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and that believing, we have become the children of God and to one day reign with Him. With all the confusion in the world, can it get worse? My answer? Yes, much, much worse! All things must play out as written in the prophetic Word of the Holy Bible! Read the Revelation of Jesus Christ. There is coming a future seven year period as never before in all the history of the world! At the end of this period known as the Great Tribulation, when judgments rain down from Heaven, when demonic activity abounds as never before, when Satan shall reign through his son, the Antichrist, when the False Prophet shall work lying and deceiving miracles, when two great wars shall try to obliterate Israel, and finally, in this super condensed time, the nations of the world shall gather to try and destroy the remnant of Israel once and for all. And at this great battle of the LORD, Armageddon, Jesus Christ shall come in the clouds in great glory with his armies following Him; the Messiah, the KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. And He shall destroy all the wicked armies assembled there at Bozrath with the Sword of His mouth, and call the birds of the air to come to the supper to devour the flesh of men and horses! The Antichrist and the False Prophet shall be cast alive into the Lake of Fire forever; Satan will be chained and bound in the Pit for a thousand years. And King Jesus shall reign in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and so shall we.

But God had planned something special for His believing Church. You see, before the Time of Jacob’s Trouble, known also as the Great Tribulation, that future seven year period I mentioned can start, Jesus Christ will come out of Heaven and call His Church to Himself, in the air above the clouds in a miraculous, loving, one-time only event as foretold in the Scriptures and known as the Rapture of the Church.

It will happen in an instant, in a flash, in the “twinkling of an eye.”” For the Apostle Paul tells us in I Thessalonians 4:13-17…

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep (dead), that you sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.

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.

For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.

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.”

In this age of great mystery as we get closer and closer to the Rapture, shouldn’t we proclaim and teach as much as we can this most vital doctrine of the Glory and love of God in Christ Jesus for the ones He loves, His Church of the past twenty centuries? What do you say?

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.