Are You Ready?

One need only spend a short time watching or listening to Christian broadcasts to learn that many believe this mountain of Megeddo will soon be a very busy place. Of course, the cinemas are depicting the end times as the year 2012, rapidly approaching, which is the end date of the Mayan calendar; as the Mayans read the alignment of the planets with the galactic center of the Milky Way. It is certainly a great achievement of the Mayans to understand the rotation of the planets and the wobble of the earth on it's axis. That alone should cause everyone to take notice of their ingenuity. Few people even understand how early civilizations could grasp something as difficult as the planetary rotation cycles in relation to the galactic center.

Jesus makes it clear in the gospels that he doesn't want us to be unaware of the end times, as does Paul. But one must wonder what difference it is actually supposed to make in our lives. It is almost a given that at the conclusion of any "end times" broadcast the question will be asked, "Are you ready for the Lord to return?" Is this the reason we have been taught about the end times?

God Is In Control???

Home-grown terrorist Nidal Hassan stunned the country this week with the carnage at Fort Hood Army Base. How can a sovereign God allow this type of carnage to exist? Is God really in control, or is man's free will an irritation that God has to work around? For that matter, how can a loving God allow events like Katrina, the tsunami, 9.11, and now this horror in Texas, to even happen. It hardly seems that the "Kingdom" is at hand. What possible good can come from these events? It would seem that God is taking too many days off, and the efforts of the saints to declare Christ are only hampered by these events. Kingdom building seems set back every time God drops the ball and something ungodly happens.

Modern Warfare

"Prayerlessness is an expression of our meager confidence in God’s ability to provide and of our strong confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves without God’s help." - Kevin DeYoung, The Gospel Coalition

Kevin tugs at the very crux of Gospel living. Do we really see how we need a savior every day? To be self absorbed, self sufficient, independent, is to be our own savior, the most deadly of sins.