Smoke From Far Away

The stories of doom in the Revelation seem like smoke from a far away fire. The days go by with life events happening much the same as they have for decades or centuries. Young couples get married and towns celebrate. Older folks pass on and the loved ones mourn. We go to work; we come home from work. Invoices arrive and bills are paid. What has changed?, the scoffers ask. As we watch the smoke from the fires around Fort Collins pass by to the north and west of us, we know one important fact -there is a fire and it is burning. We know from our Bible that one prophecy has come true: the one about scoffers doing what they do most. It is interesting that the very prophetic words doubted by the scoffers spell out the scoffing so accurately.

The prophecies of Revelation may seem far away, but the smoke is coming over us even as we live out our lives. A financial crisis may not mean that a government is unstable, but there is a little shaking going on when it cannot afford to do what it needs or wishes to do. It may be good for governments and individuals alike to spend less than we did a few years ago, but when all spending goes down people lose jobs and then there is less spending and so on. Things can start to crumble around the edges. As someone on the edge, I can testify to this. You can check too. Many of us in small towns think that the housing crisis passed us by; that it's a big city problem. However, you may want to look more carefully around your town. The very small towns have their proportional share of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and preforeclosure sales too. Are things going on exactly as they have always done?

I ask this question by typing in an e-mail I am composing on a PC connected to the Internet on which sits the World Wide Web. The text will be copied into my blog that is freely available to much of the world for reading. Today, a candidate for emperor of the world could start his campaign on social media and have a billion followers much faster than at any time in history. Actually, that kind of campaign may not have been possible until this time we live in now. The smoke from the Revelation flame is a bit heavier these days. Governments want to go to paperless money to combat counterfeiting. Mag stripe cards, RFID-encoded driver's licenses, or some kind of Internet-connected device will access bank accounts to pay for services. How much easier would that get if the chip or bar code or whatever was applied to the right hand or forehead? Hmm, maybe the flames are flickering on the edge of the horizon there. The smoke of the end times isn't so far away after all.

Don't be afraid; trust in Jesus!
Bucky