Ready, Set, Go!

By Brenda Black

What do you have planned for the weekend? For a solid week we've been gravitating to graduations, celebrating accomplishments of Kindergartners through college students with cake and cookies, beef and banquets, baccalaureates and lots of cards stuffed with cash. And the revelry and milestone moments just keep coming. As a matter of fact, I have events scheduled through the first week of June that have to do with graduations. That is if I'm here to attend them.

According to eBible Fellowship, I may not be available past May 21, 2011, the day their scholars have determined is the day believers in Christ will leave this earth. Whether you think them quacks or right on track is irrelevant. If they are wrong, it is still just a matter of time before the Lord returns in judgment. But if they are correct in their biblically formulated math equation, a great day of reckoning is mere hours away. Are you ready?

I've heard the rally cries multiple times in my life and typically dismissed them. Oh, I can remember back when there were 88 reasons why the Lord was going to come in 1988. And I got a bit stirred up. But this time I'm filled more with anticipation and the thrill that this could be the day rather than fear or worry that I had more I wanted to do while on this planet. I knew the Lord back then, but now I am more in love with my Savior than ever before and I am ready to see Him. I long to be free of the wicked ways of this world and rescued from disease and sorrow. I can't wait to see friends and family already in heaven. They'll be waving me across that River of Life and I'll come out of the water, soaking wet in paradise where I'll hug their necks! I'm ready!

To come to a place of such acceptance is only by the grace of the One who makes it possible to enter into salvation. “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) I'm ready because I'm redeemed. My mind is set, my heart is set, my eyes are fixed on the prize. Like Paul penned in 2 Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:7-8)

Do you long for His return? Are you ready? Are you set? Then who would you not want to leave behind if you are going so quickly?

I've known tiny infants to elderly saints who have already departed – some without warning, after suffering long bouts of illness and some suddenly just ended. Time is always of the essence. If this Saturday is the day we are catapulted into eternity, then what do we have to lose by sharing our faith and offering such a great escape to those who would otherwise be bound by chains for the rest of their days. And if this Saturday passes by without incident, the call is no less important. For there will come a day of reckoning. Go tell those you know and those you love and those you've just met that Jesus is Lord and Savior and Judge. Be about your Father's business every day you live so that others may know God is real and He has made great changes in your life. Show them the Way, the Truth and the Life.

It doesn't take hundreds of years of study to calculate the end result. Whenever it happens, it will happen in an instant so we just better be ready to go. “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52) And in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, we are told again, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.”

Get ready! Get set! Go!