Jim Bramlett (19 Dec 2005)
"Eating and drinking, buying and selling"

Dear friends:

Jesus said that at the time of the rapture, it will be "the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling..." (Luke 17:28).  In other words, it will be a total surprise, in a time of relative peace and normalcy, certainly not after half the world's population is destroyed in the tribulation and the world is in total turmoil.

Could that be a hint of the Christmas season?  That is also the time wherein falls Hanakkuh, the Feast of Lights, when some believe "the Light of the world" came the first time in His conception in Mary's womb?

There is not another time of year when there is more "eating and drinking, buying and selling."

According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, the top shopping days for each of the last twelve years have been as follows:

Also, nine of the top 10 busiest shopping days of the year are in December.

Could it be that in some holiday season in some December (maybe this one) people will be going about their normal business, decorating, eating, drinking, buying, selling, while the lost people and unprepared Christians will be "weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life (Luke 21:34), and suddenly "the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.  And so we will be with the Lord forever (1 Thessalonians  4:16:17, NIV).

It is very possible.  "Therefore encourage each other with these words" (v. 18).

Jim