Ever have on of those “aha” moments?

Here’s one that I wasn’t expecting and seemingly dropped out of the blue on me: two things have to occur before Jesus comes back. Until they do, he won’t.

I’ve been consuming a lot of Derek Prince recently. That’s not a smoking tobacco, it is a person. Well, it or he was a person. He died five years ago. Funny that I had quite a prejudice against him for years. I pigeonholed him into a neat category of itinerant and ignorant. That made it easy for me to ignore him or become an instant expert on why he or his writings didn’t matter.

Don’t you just hate it when somebody you respect speaks highly of those you’ve conveniently demeaned? That means you now have to actually reevaluate the person and, more often than not, discover that you were an idiot for thinking what you thought.

So it has been with Mr. Prince. I do look rather silly wearing a Derek Prince cheering costume, complete with multi-colored pompoms, but this Ph.D, Hebrew-Greek-Aramaic scholar, worker of mind-boggling miracles on untold masses and consumed by the love of Jesus, man has become the conduit for the Spirit of the Living Lord being able to finally get my attention on so many different life-changing issues.

I have not digressed, nor am I rambling.

I say all of that about Derek Prince to explain my first sentence in this post.

Over the last two weeks or so I’ve been stuck in the book of Romans, particularly in the chapters between eight and twelve. I’ve felt like a superball being bounced around a concrete garage by an overly active five-year old. I’ve also been reading Prince’s Rules of Engagement at the same time. This combination has proven conducive to a huh mentality: I’m continually saying, “Huh?”

And this is where I had the “epiphany” that two things must occur before Jesus will return. I know that getting to this point has been like riding around the desert on a horse with no name (don’t you love the imagery? Can’t you just hear the words now playing in your head, You see, I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name, it felt good to be out of the rain…). But I suppose it was necessary for me to be able to give you the objects I mentioned in the second paragraph: the gospel must be preached to “all nations” and the Jews must be gathered back to their own land, Jerusalem restored and they accept Jesus as Messiah.

Huh?

I think I’ve got more to say on this…