world’s end

Isaiah 11:6; 65:25 —————————-      (…continued)  God’s intention was to do without the big stick.  The Bible makes it clear that God would much rather deal with us by love and mercy and soft words.  That is God’s preferred way of working with us, and that is probably the way all people of good […]

————————- Matthew 24:42-44  —  (Jesus said), ““Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.  But understand this:  If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.

     (…continued)  But that wasn’t all Jesus had to say about the end of the world.  His most important word on the subject was to come right at the end of Luke’s telling of this story in chapter twenty-one.  After describing all the bad things that will happen, Jesus told the people to stand firm,

     Alma was a sweet old lady I knew in a congregation where I was a pastor years ago.  She had not always lived in in the Minnesota.  She had grown up in Pennsylvania where her parents belonged to a small religious sect.  What she described of the group sounded like something we might