These thoughts encompass the many things of prophetic progression going on as we enter 2023. Issues and events are, indeed, speeding full bore toward that twinkling-of-an-eye instant when we hear Christ shout our names, saying, “Come up here!”

However, I’d like to think a bit with you on the “race” Paul the apostle consistently worked into his great epistles. I want to bring our thoughts down to our individual sprint toward that God-ordained finish line, giving every ounce of our spiritual ability and strength to the effort.

Okay. At the risk of raising an eyebrow or two from the skeptics, I’m going to bring it up again. I can’t and won’t apologize for telling it—at least in part—again, because it is an experience I was given, and I know that not using it when appropriate would run counter to God’s purpose in the entire matter.

I’m talking about my widow-maker heart attack more than ten years ago. (The “widow-maker” occurs when an artery that runs directly into the heart is blocked. The heart stops if it isn’t cleared immediately.)

My heart did stop—on, the hospital records show, four different times. I remember three of those times because each time it stopped, I was instantaneously in front of the same huge throng of magnificent heavenly beings. They were handsome and beautiful young men and women—smiling broadly with great, energetic enthusiasm—who were bidding me to come to them. They looked no older than their mid-to-late twenties.

Each time I was with them, things shortly started darkening from the spectacular brightness of that realm. That’s what happened when the doctors in the Cath lab kept hitting me with the defibrillation paddles to restart my heart. By the third time it happened, I definitely remember not wanting to leave that joy-filled place.

That third time, I wasn’t in front of the group but among them. We were running swiftly and effortlessly toward a destination I couldn’t know at that moment. They had their hands raised, and they were looking over at me, laughing out of sheer delight, making me sense they were saying, “Isn’t this the most wonderful thing ever?!”

It sure was, and I didn’t want to leave. But, being blind, things started fading to black yet again, and I was again in darkness on the table. The doctor had removed the blockage, and I was back to stay.

I now know the raised arms and bright smiles were the way these runners were saying as they looked over at me: “This is a race we are running together… and we are already in a victory lap!”

To add validation, that experience occurred on Good Friday, April 22, 2011. Meanings of the details of that heavenly visit were provided and remain at the center of what it was all about that strange day.

The Scripture assuring me the Lord is in that experience is constantly on my mind:

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

I was running along with that “cloud of witnesses” toward the throne where Jesus sits with God the Father, wanting to award us for our victory. Our victory, of course, is possible only as we overcome this sin-filled world through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has already overcome this world of wickedness.

The race is full of obstacles made up of evil and corruption at every level, with luciferian maliciousness toward God becoming overwhelmingly evident at this hour.

We’ve looked at all of the levels of resistance to godliness throughout the past year. The “woke” insanity that has assaulted America and the world, bringing about recognition that God has turned much of our country over to the “reprobate mind” of Romans 1:28, is undeniable.

Defection from a strong stance against such insanity by even formerly staunch Christian churches has risen to apostate levels. Devilish practices (including transvestites being allowed to perform for children) have even entered some denominations.

And 2023 portends even more hellish lasciviousness. This, while at the same time that the globalist-cabal—the demonic and human powers and principalities described in Ephesians 6: 12—make plans in the New Year’s first month to bring on Antichrist’s rule as quickly as possible.

Karl Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) seems at the moment to be the primary force in this accelerated effort to bring about a one-world government. On January 16, 2023, the WEF will meet to deal with the following agenda items to create systems of control, according to reports. This is the nucleus of their much-ballyhooed “Reset.”

1. A new system to deal with energy and food crisis.
2. A new system to deal with high inflation, low growth and high economy.
3. A new system based on the use of technology.
4. A new system to deal with social issues.
5. A new system to deal with dialogue and cooperation in a multi-polar world.

The satanic powers are in a race to have everything in order when the real Reset takes place. The demonic minions among them, at least, understand that the real Reset will be the one God interjects into this world. They believe in the Rapture because they know God cannot lie. They just don’t know when it will happen (it will be cataclysmic for the world of rebels but not for Christians).

You and I are in an even more profound race of destiny. The race God has chosen for us to run is all-important within His eternal knowledge. We are to run it all out and give all we can to God’s great calling in our lives–individually and collectively as His Church.

Paul the apostle informs about his own race, which he carried out spectacularly to the very end of his life and until his beginning at home in Heaven:

“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).

Let us run this race in which we’ve been placed for this time at the very end of this Church Age. Like Paul heard, we want to hear what the Lord said will be His words for us when we finish this race to the best of our ability:

“…Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matthew 25:21).

Have you ever, in a moment of immersion in deep thought, had a question like “When did the existence of God begin?” Or perhaps: “How could God always have existed, and how can He exist forever?”

I’ve had similar questions a number of times over my life as a Christian. Yet it isn’t with doubt but rather with wonderment that I’ve indulged in these imponderable ponderings. The finite mind is incapable of such infinite cogitation. That is, the human brain is not able to carry out such thought to the point of securing satisfactory answers.

We who are believers in Christ for salvation know that every word in the Bible is absolute truth. We can trust what is written in God’s love letter to mankind to us, His born-again children. John wrote the following regarding his and his fellow disciples’ closeness to Jesus during His time of ministry:

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare us unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1-3).

So, while it is not just difficult but impossible to understand the questions above concerning the eternal existence of Jesus, we trust that every Word is truth.

Another question along this line might be: “Did God the Father Create Jesus?”

This is how we interpret naturally. Everything has a beginning–a moment of coming into existence. Every one of us had our conception, our birth. So it is a natural question for the human mind: “Did Jesus begin when He was born upon planet Earth?”

Of course, we who believe God’s Word about our Lord’s earthly incarnation know God didn’t create Jesus Christ, the Son—just as God didn’t create the Holy Spirit. All three are, and have always been, God. They are coequal as the Triune Godhead–the Trinity.

The Bible teaches that Jesus is a separate and distinct God who existed with the Father before anything was created. The Father did not create Jesus; in fact, all three –God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—have existed from eternity past and will exist forever.

I want to delve into…well…into pondering with our finite thinking the infinite matters of that most important statement in all the Scripture so far as mankind is concerned.

We have just passed through another Christmas, a time when we honor the earthly incarnation –the advent/birth—of our Lord Jesus Christ.

While the Apostle John was exiled by the Roman government on the Aegean Island of Patmos, Jesus gave Him a vision–the Revelation, as we know it. The following is what John tells us he heard Jesus say to him at one point very early in the vision.

“And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:17-18).

Much later in the Revelation, Jesus said: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22:13).

The Lord also said:

“And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son” (Revelation 21:6-7).

Wrapped up in those powerful words is Christ’s declaration of His Godhood and eternal existence.

He exclaims that He is the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and Omega.

Jesus says without equivocation: “It is done!” He promises further:

“To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”

You see, He declares He is God and gives eternal life to all who overcome. We know, of course, that we overcome only through our absolute belief and trust in Jesus, who has overcome the world.

The Lord’s declaration, “It is done,” is the most thrilling, greatest promise of all. Since He is the Alpha and Omega–the beginning and the end—He alone can say that salvation of the believer is already done.

It was done as He said while voluntarily giving up His life to death in order to rescue you and me from the penalty of sin: “It is finished!”

Really, though, it was done–finished—from eternity past. God’s plan for our salvation was already in effect then, as God is outside of time. He had His plan in place back in eternity past, and it is already finished in eternity future. He chose us from the foundation of the world.

“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:4-6).

When we look around us at things going on–the world seeming to fall apart—we can say along with our friend Jan Markell: Things aren’t falling apart; they are falling together. They are coming together just as our Lord said they would. Everything is right on the heavenly course for redeeming us and rejuvenating planet earth.

The Rapture, too, is going to be right on time–on God’s time! And I, for one, believe it is so close we could reach out and touch it, were that possible. You don’t want to miss it. Here again is how to make sure you are part of Jesus’ profound promise, “It is finished!”

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).