He Is Coming!! — Charles Anderson

Already today on television and radio and with increasing frequency throughout this evening, I presume, and certainly throughout tomorrow, there will be in all the newscasts and special programs a review of the events of this past year that has just or is going by, and there will undoubtedly be some kind of prognostications concerning what the future may hold.

But as you and I look out upon our world tonight, we recognize that it's a very troubled and disturbed world, to say the very least. People ask sometimes, as they also look out upon our upset and disturbed society, where is it all going to end?

The Troubled State of the World

Well, we may not know when it's going to end, but we know where and how it's all going to end. The how will be when God brings together all things under the subjection of the rule of his own dear Son, and the where of this is likely to be at the city of Jerusalem, if we understand Old Testament prophecy.

Again, I say our world seems to be hopelessly caught in a web of its own weaving. Peace is an elusive, wishful thought, and the ray of hope that men will live together harmoniously, side by side, regardless of race or color or creed, I think grows dimmer with each passing day.

And then the news media of our day bombards us constantly with all sorts of tragedies, wars, earthquakes, uprisings, rebellion, murder. They become the daily diet on which we are forced to feed on television or radio, newspapers and magazines.

We're painfully aware that we are poisoning the air we breathe. We're polluting the water we drink. We're contaminating the food we eat until our planet, our home, is becoming an intolerable place, and will get worse than getting any better.

It will get worse if we proceed as we are now going. Famine and pestilence are everyday happenings. Adds up to a very desperate situation that has caused men to turn or to seek, in some cases, to some very desperate measures.

Despair Among the Younger Generation

Take our younger generation. I think that a great many of the young people of the past decade or two have become so unconsciously aware of the desperate situation in which we find ourselves as human beings on planet Earth that they want to escape from it.

And maybe the whole drug traffic is a device that youth uses to somehow get out of the reality of life. One of the grimmest factors, grimmest factors it seems to me, is that every single year in the United States of America, 50 ,000 young people between the ages of 11 and 14 attempt to commit suicide.

Did you know that? And 5 ,000 of them are successful in that attempt every year, and the numbers are increasing. I can understand a little bit a man who commits suicide, who may discover that he is afflicted by an incurable disease and only has a short time to live, and may say, I want to run away from it and I'll end it all.

I can sympathize with a man or a person who faces a total marital disaster, saying I can't live on and takes their life. I don't excuse it. I say I can understand it, and I can sympathize with such a person perhaps.

But please tell me, in the name of common sense, why would an 11-year-old kid blow his brains out? Why would a 12-year-old boy or girl take poison and commit suicide at that early age of life? This is a national tragedy.

It may well be that subconsciously the youth of our times are saying there is no way out, there's no hope, why even try to live in this kind of a society? Well, it's a bleak picture. The turn of the year, 1987 into 1988, is not a very bright or happy prospect for us.

Jerusalem, the Gentiles, and the Return of Christ

And I think of the words of the Lord Jesus when in Luke's Gospel it's recorded that he said that the Jews should fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

Some years ago I was standing on the Mount of Olives with a very dear brother who was one of the brethren from the assemblies in England, and he happened to be and had been for some 25 years the manager of Barclays Bank in Jerusalem.

And when the troubles subsided a little bit at that time, he was the only non-Jew and non-Arab who was unanimously asked by both parties if he would consider becoming the mayor of Jerusalem, Sir Stanley Clark.

And on this Sunday afternoon as we stood on the Mount of Olives, we looked down with Jerusalem at our feet and it was one of those crystal clear days and we could actually see the waters of the Dead Sea yonder and we could see the waters of the Mediterranean also.

That little land is so little, really little. And I said to him, Mr. Clark, you know the Word of God and you've lived in this land for a long time, a quarter of a century or more. Tell me, do you believe, Sir, that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back again?

And very fervently he said, I certainly do. Then I said, Sir, do you believe that his feet will actually touch somewhere near where you and I are right now standing? And I could feel him choke up just a little bit at the thought of that thing and he said, I do, I do, I do indeed.

Then I said to him, Sir, will you tell me how far away do you think the Lord's return is? And his reply was a shocking reply to me. I was expecting him to say, oh, maybe within five years, ten years, twenty years, within our lifetime.

But he looked at me for a moment and he said, I'll tell you how far away the coming of our Savior is. Fifteen hundred feet away. I said, what do you mean by that? He said, look yonder at that city at our feet, Jerusalem.

At that time it was divided. When I was there and when we were talking together, you could only go through one gate. It was divided, a divided city. You really literally had to have two passports to pass back and forth.

He said, one of these days, very shortly, the Jews are going to move across that no man's land strip, fifteen hundred feet wide, and they're going to occupy this city. And when that happens, the times of the Gentiles will be fulfilled and the Savior must come.

Well, now, you know, we've lived to see almost the fulfillment of that. I don't think Jerusalem is yet totally occupied by the Jews. There still is some doubt about their right to occupy it, at least.

But it does betoken the fact that maybe these words of Jesus could easily be fulfilled in a very short time. The times of the Gentiles, Jerusalem will be trodden down until then. Then our Lord went on to say, and there shall be signs in the sun, in the moon, in the stars, and upon the earth, distress of nations with perplexity.

Now that's a fascinating Greek word. What it really means is a cul-de-sac, the end of a road, a dead end. And it could well be translated, no way out. Hear it again. And upon the earth, distress of nations with no way out.

The sea and the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after the things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

And when these things begin to come to pass, look up, lift up your heads, for your redemption draws nigh. I think it's almost impossible for us to come to a moment like this on the calendar without thinking about the most important event yet in the future.

Perhaps the most important event beyond Calvary, and that is the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ into our world. Now, when our Savior was here, he gathered his disciples together, you remember, in that last briefing session just before the darkness of Gethsemane and the deeper darkness of Calvary.

And what he had to say to his disciples is recorded for us in a heart section of the Gospel of John. It begins with chapter 13 and ends in chapter 17. The last words of our Savior to his disciples spoken here on the earth.

And they were prefaced by this great statement. He knew that they were disturbed. He knew that they were upset. He knew that they were emotionally uncertain at that moment. And so he says to them, listen, don't you let your hearts be troubled.

As the Greek puts it, don't let there be even a ripple of concern in your hearts. Because I'm going away. I'm going to prepare a place for you in my Father's house. And then listen to this. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself.

That where I am, there you may be also. Those are the most astonishing of all the words, I think, that our Lord spoke. I will come again. Did he mean that literally? Of course he did. If he didn't, he shouldn't have said it.

He meant what he said. I will come again. A year or so ago, I was in the Philippines. And I went down one morning to what was to me a nostalgic kind of experience. I went down to Manila Bay. And there in the haze as I looked across the shimmering waters of the bay, I saw the dim outlines of that famous rock Corregidor.

The name Corregidor raises in American minds a lot of grim memories. You remember how the Japanese came down through the Bataan Peninsula and they drove our military forces, they shrank the area in which they were and they drove them over to the rock of Corregidor.

And then without any help from home, with dwindling supplies, with diminishing medical supplies, with increasing illness on the part of our troops, General Douglas MacArthur faced the awful problem of what to do.

And with no air force to combat the bees of the Japanese that bombarded the rock, and with very little artillery to respond to the heavy bombarding of that rock that the Japanese were able to do without any interference until it was like a bullseye on a target and they hit it and hit it and hit it again day in, day out, day in and day out.

Night time too, the rock shook under the pounding of the Japanese. And little by little we were worn down. And at last came the command from Washington to General Douglas MacArthur, we must surrender.

And he was ordered, you remember, to get off the rock and so under the cover of darkness one night, a submarine, first a PT boat and then a submarine farther out, they came and took him and Mrs. MacArthur and the little boy and their household belongings and they took them out and put them on a submarine and took him down to Australia there to re-plan the strategy of how to get back at the Japanese.

He left that wretched condition in the hands of a then, at that time, ranking colonel, Jonathan Wainwright, a very slim, skinny man. They called him Skinny Wainwright. And his was the sad task of at last surrendering our forces to the Japanese.

And the American flag for the first time in years and years in military conflict came down in defeat and the rising sun flag of Japan took its place. And then our men and the nurses and all our forces were taken off the rock by the Japanese and there followed one of the ugliest chapters in American history, the Bataan Death March.

As they marched our men up that Bataan Peninsula in the blazing Philippine sun, sick and weary and hungry and thirsty, and whenever they staggered, they dashed their brains out with the butts of rifles or killed them on the spot and it was a bloody, bloody trail back to Japanese concentration camps.

I thought of all that as I looked at that rock, but I thought of something else too. The night MacArthur left, he turned to Jonathan Wainwright and he said, Skinny, you can tell the Filipinos and you can tell our troops one thing, I will return.

I'm coming back. You can count on it. And you know in the months that lengthened into a year or two after that, I understand that every cartridge that was dropped from the air, every pack of cigarettes, every six pack of beer that was dropped from the skies on our troops up in the hills and the mountains, on every piece of equipment that was stamped these words, I will return, Douglas MacArthur.

And when the going got tough and dark and bleak and hopeless, that promise of return that he was coming back again buoyed them and gave them hope and they fought on. And I'll never forget, who can forget it, that day when he waded ashore, he boarded MacArthur in Leyte, Leyte Gulf, and he took a microphone and over the clandestine radio network of the Philippines, MacArthur said, I have returned.

I've come back. And victory followed. And from that moment on until the decks of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, it was constant victory all the way until a battle was won. Now, I want to tell you something.

For two thousand embattled years, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ has withstood the forces of hell. It sometimes has been dragged into the fire. It sometimes has been martyred. It has baptized itself in its own blood, but always it has been supported by a glorious promise.

I will come again. I'm coming back. And one of these days he is coming back. Now, you know, I believe tonight that the coming of the Lord Jesus is imminent. That is liable to happen at any moment. That's what imminency means.

His coming is not, I don't think. If I'm wrong, it won't make any difference anyhow. If he doesn't come for a thousand years, you won't be able to chide me too much, except in heaven to remind me you said what you said, you know, down there at Park of the Palm.

But I don't believe that. Maybe some of us, as I look out in this audience, I see so much snow on the roof and shingles missing that I'm aware of what's happened to us calendar-wise. But if you were, say, fifteen or twenty years younger, on the average, I would dare to say that you are going to be in the generation that will be raptured when Jesus comes.

That's how close I think his coming is. Now, don't say he's a heretic, he set dates. I didn't set any dates at all. And you'll know that before I'm finished that I am anything but a date setter. But I'm saying to you that I believe that the generation of young people today is going to be the rapture generation.

I hope that the Lord spares me long enough because there's an undertaker back there in Bloomfield that used to bury all our people. And whenever I'd go there and have a funeral, I get the feeling he's looking at me saying, I'll get to you too one of these days.

And I should like to cheat him, I tell you, I should like to cheat him. I don't want him to collect anything on me. So I hope the Lord comes while I'm still alive, and you are too. How wonderful to be able to go at that time.

Well, that promise of Jesus is still there in the book, I will come again. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I'm coming again. And that promise was further reiterated on the day of his ascension.

The Ascension Commission and the Promise of Return

When having been called up into heaven, the disciples were standing there gazing at the spot where he disappeared when two men, supernatural beings of sorts, appeared and said, what are you men gazing up into heaven for?

This same Jesus which is taken up from you will come again as he's gone. And I think there was a little chiding note in that. Don't stand here gazing. You're not called to be stargazers. That's a waste of good life and time.

I've just given you a commission. You shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me. Beginning at Jerusalem, both at Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and don't stop until you've reached the uttermost parts of the earth.

Now stop standing here, wasting time gazing up into heaven. This Jesus is going to come. Now you get busy. Get out and do the job that he's commissioned us to do. And that's still true. It's still there in the book.

And that's what our business ought to be. Now, other particulars and other details of his coming, how he's going to come, what's going to happen when he comes, who's going to be affected when he comes, all those details are filled in somewhat in other passages of Scripture, such as 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, where the Apostle Paul, you know, says to them that he had received a very special revelation from God, and the Lord Jesus was going to come, first of all, to raise the dead and transform them, and then to rapture the living and transform them, and together they will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And we pursue all those details. Now, the biggest question that we face all the time is the question of the when. When is he going to come? You remember at the end of that Bible conference that lasted some six weeks following the resurrection, when the disciples and the Lord met together for 40 days between resurrection and Pentecost.

It must have been a great Bible conference, don't you think? Wouldn't you have liked to have attended it? When our Lord opened unto them the Scriptures and revealed so many things they didn't know, and solidified their faith and strengthened them, and now came the moment when he was going to leave them for good.

But you know, just before he did, he may have said, now, anybody got any questions? And one of those disciples said, yeah, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the king? What was the heart of that question?

When is it going to happen? We're all so innately curious we want to know when. Now, it's not always easy to answer that question. And so, in the time that I have left, I want to just address myself very quickly to this matter of signs.

The Rapture and the Revelation

Signs of the times. First of all, let me say that I believe that the coming again of the Lord Jesus will be in two distinct phases. There will, first of all, be the secret phase, we may call it, which is popularly called the rapture of the church.

That will be when he comes in the clouds of heaven and does just what I said a moment ago, raise the righteous dead, the believing dead, and rapture the living. That's going to be an exciting moment. And he will take his church out of this world.

Out, completely. Because the church is not involved at all in the events that follow, which we call the great tribulation period. There's no reason for the church to be on the earth or experience those events.

There's no purpose, and they're not included in the plan of God at that time. The tribulation period is an exhibition of divine wrath against three groups of people. A, Israel, the Jews. B, the apostate church.

And C, the unbelieving Gentile nations. The church isn't involved at all. It's in heaven when all of this takes place. But then at the end of the tribulation period, just a short period of time between the rapture and this return of Christ, he will come from the heavens, his feet will touch the Mount of Olives, at the moment of Israel's deepest crisis, when the city itself is surrounded by military forces that we simply can't contemplate how great it will be.

Representation will be from all the nations. And there sits Jerusalem, ready to be plucked by the nations. In that awful hour of crisis, he will come and his feet will touch this earth. He'll split the Mount of Olives and so on.

You know the other particulars of the eschatological program. But we call that near, that first phase of the Lord's return, we call the rapture of the church. That little farther return, we generally call the revelation.

The rapture, the revelation. Now sometimes when I am asked to speak in a meeting, usually in youth rallies, I say, do you have a program? Who's pitching tonight and who's catching? I want to know what the program is.

And they'll hand me one. And then I look at it and I start counting. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. I'm number 19 on the program. They've got 18 things to happen before I get a chance to speak. Then to make it worse, just before I do, they say, these young people are tired.

Don't be long. Come on, buddy, I just traveled four hours to get here, and I'll sit through 18 points and you tell me not to be long? Well, anyway, allow me one more, will you? So I count up, 17, 18, and when it gets to be about the 17th part of the program, I straighten my tie, I get my notes ready, I get my Bible ready, I clear my throat and I say, one more thing and I'm on.

And then the Master of Ceremonies pulls this stunt. Oh, now before our speaker, and I know it's coming, we'll have Sister Bronson. She's going to sing the third time. Now, Sister Bronson couldn't sing the first two times, but we have to endure her third performance.

Or a guy blows a horn. Nobody knows what he was blowing. And they put him on the third time to eat up another four or five minutes of my precious time. Or else they'll say, oh, one thing, we had a rally four months ago and we forgot to give out the awards.

So before Dr. Anderson speaks, we're going to have a roll call. Oh, no. And I say, oh, that program doesn't mean a thing. Well, now I'll tell you something. If you could take your Bible and a piece of paper and start writing down the prophecies mentioned in the Bible.

Start with Genesis 3 .15. And very carefully list all the things that are prophesied in the Scripture. The prophecies will fall into two classifications. One, fulfilled prophecies. You can tick them off.

Here's the prophecy. There was the fulfillment. That's finished. That's passed. There it is. And you go down the line. Then there's a large number of what we call unfulfilled prophecies. They await fulfillment.

Though they may seem impossible of fulfillment, yet they will be because God is faithful to His Word and His promise and He'll do it. All right. Now, as I look down that calendar, I say, where are we on the calendar?

This is 1987, and within a few minutes it'll be 1988. Now, what's next on the prophetic calendar? And it's exciting to know this. Between 1988 and the return of Jesus Christ for His church, I say to you very soberly and seriously, I do not believe there is a single yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecy before He comes.

That is the next thing on God's program. Nothing between us and it. But you say, where then comes signs of the times? You will destroy a favorite message of mine if you don't be careful. Well, first of all, let me say I believe that this near event is a signless event.

No signs are given to us as to when it will occur. Not one. But there are many signs pointing to that farther event. Maybe I can illustrate it thus. I'm on my way down 95 toward South Florida. I'm a stranger.

Never been this way before. I don't have a map. And I'm in such a hurry to get where I'm going to Miami. Can't wait to get there. When I get there, I can't wait to get out. But anyway, I'm on my way to Miami.

And so I've traveled a good many miles. And I say, I wonder how far it is to Miami. And then I say, no, I'm not going to go to Miami. Because I do see some signs. Miami, 200 miles. Oh, that's a long way.

I think I'd like instead to go to Melbourne on the coast. Now, as far as I haven't seen a sign pointing to Melbourne. I only know, somehow I know that Melbourne comes before Miami. Now, there isn't a single sign that tells me how far it is to Melbourne.

But I see many signs telling me how far it is to Miami. So I conclude, very simply, that if it's 200 miles to Miami, it must be something less than 200 miles to Melbourne. Right? Okay. Therefore, the signs that we read concerning the future all point to Miami, the Revelation phase.

None of them point to Melbourne, the Rapture phase. But when I see some very obvious signs pointing to that second event, have I not a right to conclude that if those signs are genuine and real, then we must be nearer to the first event than the second one?

You see? So, it's proper to look for signs. So long as I don't pin my expectation upon whether or not I properly interpret a sign, and instead of that, I should be pinning my hope and expectation upon the naked word of the living God that any moment He will come.

Whether I understand signs or don't understand them will have nothing to do with my relationship to that event. Now, I have only time to point out this. There are areas where I think we can observe some very significant signs.

Signs of the End Times

First of all, in general society, I believe that our society is being prepared inevitably, inexorably now, for tribulation times. We are moving inexorably into the darkness of the eclipse that will take place in the tribulation period.

We may look for those signs. What are those signs? I'll name them. Just name them. Increasing ignorance of the word of God, decreasing power of the witness of God, the acceleration of deception, and abounding iniquity.

All these mixed together are preparing our society for the tribulation hours yet to come. Then what's the second area in which we may expect some signs? That is the preparation of Israel. How exciting it is for us right here tonight, all of us, to have lived to see the establishment of a Jewish nation as a nation.

That is one of the most significant signposts that one can imagine. Just suppose for a moment that the Antichrist had come before 1948. Now, I know it's a hypothetical case I'm proposing. Suppose he had come in 1930.

We know that the prophecies of the Bible say he must enter into a political and religious kind of covenant relationship to a nation called Israel. Please tell me, if Antichrist had appeared on the world scene in 1930, with what group of Jews would he have entered into some kind of negotiation?

Brooklyn Jews? That wouldn't have helped any. Brazilian Jews? No. They wouldn't have been totally representative. But if he appears on the world scene any time after 1948, he has a Knesset, a parliament, a prime minister, political parties, a nation that has all the framework of a bona fide nation in existence.

And not until 1948 could Antichrist have accomplished that purpose. Exciting to know that we've seen that happen. I could mention some others, but I go on. The third area in which I think we may see signs of the nearness of the Lord's return, and I'll dwell a little bit on that for just another two or three minutes, is what I call the alignment of the nations.

When one examines the prophetic scriptures, it would appear that at the end time, at the very end time, the world will be divided in political, military alliances into four distinct groups. Group number one is popularly called the Great Northern Confederacy.

That means Russia, and I am assuming a great deal here tonight. You have a lot of background in this, so I can assume it. Russia and her allies are going to be involved in an invasion of the land of Israel.

We know that. So there will be, on the world scene, a political, military alliance headed up by Russia. Is it in existence tonight? Yes. Yes. Second, there will be a European coalition of nations, and Bible students have called that coalition by this name that you'll recognize, a revival of a form of the ancient Roman Empire in the Mediterranean and European areas.

Has it ever occurred to you why Germany is divided tonight into East and West Germany? Will they ever be reunited? Never. I dare to make that statement, almost categorically, never. Why? Because Germany, part of Germany, must be allied in the end with Russia in its rebellion against God and Israel.

And yet, part of Germany was also in the old Roman Empire. Look at the ancient maps. Now, it couldn't be on both sides of the fence unless something had happened. What happened was that as a result of World War II, Germany was split in two, and it remains a divided nation tonight.

And I think it will remain that way down to the end of time. But the second great military-political alliance is an alliance of the European powers. Then there's a third, called in the book of Daniel the Kings of the South.

All direction in prophecy is reckoned from the city of Jerusalem, north, Jerusalem south, from Jerusalem east and west. The kings of the south, I think, can be identified with the Afro-Arab combination.

They're south of Israel. And we are seeing that coalition taking definite form in its anti-Semitic attitudes. And then the fourth area, and this is all, I think, discernible in Bible prophecy. I haven't given you the scriptures, but I can recite them tonight.

I think the fourth area is what is called in the book of Revelation the kings of the sun rising, or the far eastern nations. You know, we've lived to see the day when the tiger of China has awakened, when Korea is awake, Manchuria is awake, India is awake.

The oriental nations, they're never going back to sleep again. World politics from this hour onward can never be formulated without a consideration of the peoples of the far east. And they will figure prominently in the end time maneuvers.

So these four great military and political powers have been forming during this very generation in which we're living. And as I see those signs, and they'll all be involved in the period between the rapture and the revelation.

And I read those signs and I say, hallelujah, we may be nearer. I see them now, they're taking form. Maybe I'm nearer to Melbourne than I thought. Maybe I'm nearer to the rapture than I even dreamed. Now, I could name one other area, the apostasy of the church.

When you put all these together, this is the electrifying thing. I often have people come to me and say, ah, you've always had those sort of things. They've always been in existence, I say, but not all at the same time.

That's it, not all at the same time. You've never had the combination of elements that I have described in preparation of general society for the coming of an antichrist, a world ruler. And at the same time, Israel, the resurrection and stirring of the Jewish nation.

And at the same time, the formulation of these four great factors in the end time. And at the same time, the growing apostasy in the professing church. When you put them all together and they're in existence and functioning simultaneously, then you've got an exciting situation.

And I think that that's exactly what we have now. All right, I have to conclude, but I want to just tell you this story. There was a man, I read this, it was in the New York Times. Now, you know, the New York Times prints all the news that's fit to print, so they say.

That's their motto on the masthead. I'm not always sure of that, but they are pretty dependable. And the New York Times told this story. Back in the days when there was a great storm in the East Coast, there was a man who lived pretty far out on Long Island, and he had made the announcement to his family that he would like for his birthday a barometer.

Not a thermometer, but a barometer. He wanted to be his own weather prognosticator. And so for his birthday, the family put together, gave him enough money, and so since he worked in Manhattan on his lunch hour, he went down to Tiffany's.

And he went in and he bought himself a classy and pretty expensive barometer. He could hardly wait to get home that night to fiddle with it. But he got on the train and went out, way out on the island, and of course it was raining.

It wasn't such a nice night, and he wasn't listening too much to people chattering around about him, but they were chattering about a storm of some kind, but that didn't register at all. So he got home, and after supper, he got that lovely instrument out of its box.

He unwrapped it, and he said he looked at it for a minute, and the needle pointed to storm. Now for just one moment, he went outside to look up, and there was a break in the clouds, and he saw a couple of stars, and he said, Don't tell me now.

I got a wrong instrument. Oh, well, maybe you're supposed to shake it a bit. So he shook it, but he couldn't make the needle move. Then he went, No, you don't do that to these fine instruments, but he did, and it didn't move.

So then he thumped it a little bit. Then he banged it again, and at last he came to the angry conclusion that he'd been cheated, that this thing didn't work. And he determined in his mind that he was going to take it back the first thing tomorrow and tell those folks off.

He'd paid a lot of money for that thing. As he went to bed, he took one last look at it and said, Stormy. He couldn't believe it. He woke up in the morning and wrapped it up, got on the train, and indeed the weather had gotten a bit worse.

And the New York Times says he took it back to Tiffany's, and they explained to him there was nothing wrong with the instrument because that next night when he got on the train to come back home, that vicious hurricane struck Long Island and blew his house down.

Ironic. Well, you know, we have an instrument. Here it is. And despite now and again there's a star of hope that shines, now and again things don't look quite as glum, and the book still says, Storm's ahead.

Judgment ahead. Coming of the Lord ahead. You can trust this instrument. You really can. No matter what it looks like on the outside and whether we can interpret it or not, this instrument is God's own word to us, and we can trust it.