"Instant" means "instant"

8:08 p.m. Today's project was to learn what it meant, for the first time in a long while, to act out in real time II Timothy 4:2 (KJV):

Preach the word! Be instant [ready] in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.

I picked up my dad, age 85, from his house in Redlands for an afternoon together. Our plan was to listen to my late husband's memorial service CD because Daddy had been unable to attend. My son-in-law had worked without success during breakfast time to get the DVD slide show to work in the player we have, but we'd have to settle for an audio CD, with posters of the pictures they used for my dad to view.

While we were eating our McDonald's--ugh--lunch parked in the shade, I commented on the struggle I'm having with Social Security, and the delays with the life insurance companies and how Steve is with the Lord now, not having to worry about any of it. Daddy said, "Now wait a minute! He's in his resting place for now." I said, "No, his body is here on earth, but his spirit is with the Lord right now. 'Absent from the body is present with the Lord!' " (II Corinthians 5:8)

Then we arrived here at home, where I showed Daddy all of the photo collection, he held the leather urn of Steve's ashes, and we commented on the heavy weight and light color of the ashes. While I worked to get the CD of Pastor Jeff Lasseigne's service to play, he read Steve's official death certificate, perusing every very closely.

Try as I might, the CD would not play. But God had a better, far superior agenda for our time together.

Daddy again brought up the "resting place" idea. For clarification, Daddy studied with the Jehovah Witnesses for a period of time about three years ago. He became pretty distant when my book Galatians:An Exploration of Faith & Freedom came out. Even though he ordered several copies to distribute to his sisters, his own reading of Galatians' denunciation of works-driven cults such as Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons cut him to the quick--and rightfully so. Their doctrines have been in opposition to biblical truth, causing innocents to fall into "the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will" (II Timothy 2:26:b).

I began by explaining to him the difference between the Old Testament saints who awaited Jesus's death on the cross and resurrection for the salvation of ALL believers. We, since the resurrection of Christ, go directly to be with Him at death. The Lord had me take him to I Thessalonians 4:16-17,

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God. and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

"The 144,000," he said. (remember, he'd been listening the Jehovah's witnesses). "No, they are Jews who will be saved after Christians are taken to heaven, during the terrible time of the Tribulation, and read to him Revelation 7:3, where an angel says, "Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads." verse 4:

And I [the Apostle John] heard the number of those who were sealed. One hundred forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed:

And then I read down the names of each tribe, one at a time, repeating 12,000, over and over, so Daddy could plainly see that they will be members of the tribes of Israel. He got it!! But he did say, piquing my curiosity about the Jehovah Witness translation of the Bible, "I don't remember seeing this in my Bible." I said, "Well, Daddy, here it is!" We moved on to his next question, after having some conversation about translations.

Continuing his curiosity about the Old Testament, "Have any of the prophecies of the Old Testament come true?" "Oh yes," I replied, "Israel becoming a nation once again." He said, "What happened in 1947-48, right?" "Yes." And then we read Ezekiel's 37's prophecy about the valley of dry bones coming to life and change into a mighty army filled with the breath of God. Verse 14 says,

I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. To answer another of his questions, I checked Pastor Chuck Smith's introductory notes and we read that Ezekiel was written in 571 B.C. at the latest, and finally came true! We actually calculated all of the years it took...

We moved then to prophecies of Jesus' suffering and death, such as Isaiah 53:3-5, and Zechariah 12:10. Then we took up the prophecy of Genesis 2:15, the passage about the enmity between the seed of Satan and the Seed of the woman. "The Seed?" "Daddy, who was the only Person born without a human father?" "Jesus!" he smiled. And in Malachi 3, we saw the messenger who announced Jesus, John the Baptist.

Revelation back to Genesis, and a number of books in between, made for quite an afternoon! After so much prayer by our family and my women's Bible study groups over the last few years, God saw fit to make a breakthrough, and I give Him all the glory, as my dad enters his final phase of this earthly life.