Eat The Scroll…Or Not

I have some good news.  A good friend of ours has started an end-time discussion forum, eatthescroll.net.  Good news for me and Dave since, as you know, we’ve been wanting a way to share and discuss end-times “stuff.”   I’ve already posted some of my material on eatthescroll.net and have enjoyed some pretty lively discussion around it.  So, it’s safe to assume this will be the future venue for the rest of my end-time thoughts.  This is good news for all of you too, since you probably visit djandtheprophets solely to be enamored with cute photos and stories about our kids…not to have to think about eschatology!

I want to say, as a bit of a disclaimer, that writing is very therapeutic for me.  It helps me to take abstract thoughts and ideas from my brain and get them down in black and white written form.  It is only then, for me anyway, that ideas become concrete and understandable.  And by “concrete,” I don’t mean that everything I write then becomes some sort of dogma to me.  I mean, rather, that once my thoughts assume a written form, that I myself can read and ponder and wrestle with them in a much more profound way.  One of my very favorite Bible teachers, David Sliker, whom Dave included in one of his recent posts, says that for the Word of God to become alive inside you, you must teach it.  I truly believe that and, for me, this blog has kind of been my classroom as of late…and I’m teaching myself!

I also want to say that I’ve been very much wooed into this whole thing.  God has divenly and gently guided my heart into a place where I can feel the urgency of the hour we are living in.  (A year ago, I probably would have thought that I had lost my mind!)   Admittedly, I have a lot of zeal for you all to feel this same urgency and I don’t really know what to do with it all.  I’m new at this!  Thankfully we are only at the beginning of the beginning, and I have time to learn.  My desire is to share all that I’m learning with boldness and meekness.

Also, I have a lot of faith that, in the same way that has God wooed me into this, He will, and He is, wooing the Church.  He will prepare his people.  I was super encouraged yesterday at church as our pastor shared his conviction that he felt it was his responsibility, as our leader, to prepare us for the coming storm, the persecution that will come to the end-time church.   He also shared about how the Lord has been shifting his idea of what it means to have a successful church in this hour…it’s not about numbers, money, or the size of our building or programs.  It’s about hearts in his congregation being steadfast in Christ; the Christ of the entire  Bible, not just the baby Jesus of Christmas or the meek and tender lamb who said not a word as he was led to the slaughter, but the Jesus of Revelation too. 

So, in the new year, our church will be hanging out in the book of Revelation.  I’m really excited.  I felt like standing up in the middle of church and yelling, “Give it up for Pastor Matt!  Who, who, who!”  (You know, like the dad on the TV show Home Improvement ?)  I love that he is stepping out in faith and leading our church into an understanding of eschatology.  It’s brave of him to tackle such a controversial and weighty subject, I think, and I’m really proud of him!  But also, the fact that he is willing to do this is proof positive to me that this whole thing is so, SO much bigger than me.  God is going to bring forth a church that is ready to stand amidst the shaking that is to come.