   Sister, the Word of God tells us that "at the end" there would be a longing in the heart of the Bride for her bridegroom to come. I am basing this on an amplified "interpretation" of Habakkuk 2:2-3, something I very rarely ever do. But this passage was one of the driving forces behind the Rapture 88 movement in 1988. When that movement subsided after the Lord hadn't come, the scoffers labeled the whole movement as a lie. I knew many of the people involved in that movement; good people, true believers with a heart for God. I also knew that hundreds of lost people had come to know the Lord during the course of that movement. I knew that movement had come from God, and that it wasn't a lie. Therefore I earnestly went to the Lord in prayer for the reason why so many of God's people were left so disappointed. Sister, the Lord directed me right back to the same p! assage again, and impressed upon me that I needed to "really" study that passage.
    So after that movement had passed, I restudied the passage in depth in the Hebrew text, and found that in the Hebrew text the passage literally reads, "Write the vision, and engrave (it) on the tablets, so that he may run who is reading it. [That is exactly what hundreds of God's people did in 1988].
The next verse then says, "For still the vision is for the time set [appointed festival], but it pants [hastens] to the end; and not does lie. Though it delays [hesitates], wait for it, for surely it will come; it will not tarry."
    Sister, what this verse says to me is that the vision spoke to God's people first in 1988 in a great move of God that brought hundreds of souls to a saving knowledge of Christ. The vision was written on the tablets of the hearts of true believers in 1988, to the extent that those true believers never forgot it nor turned from it. There were a lot of "nominal" believers that joined the scoffers after 1988, and went searching for some "new" theology to fill the vacuum in their soul. But the true beleivers didn't! They had the truth of the "blessed hope" of the pre-millennial, pre-tribulation rapture at the coming of the Lord, and they stayed with that truth. Praise the Lord!
    Now the real "appointed time" is approaching; yea, is right at the door. The vision is speaking again, and God's people are once more "running" to tell the message of the vision. There is now a longing in the heart of all true believers that trancends this world and everything in it.   The allurements of and attachments to this world are growing dimmer by the minute. The glory of God is shining through the veil, and every true believer knows it. Oh glory to God! He is coming!  All creation has been waiting for this event [Romans 8:19 8:22-23], and all those in Heaven are anticipating and waiting for our arrival. We who are true believers know that ".....our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like! unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself," Philippians 3:20-21.

    Praise the Lord! Glory! Glory to God! Hallelujah!

                    "Oh don't you hear the bells now ringing?
                          Oh don't you hear the angels singing?
                     Tis the glorly hallelujah jubilee.
                          In that far off sweet forever,
                     Just beyond the shining river,
                          They're ringing the golden bells
                     For you and for me."

                            [My apologies to the writer of this
                             beautiful old hymn for changing
                             some of the words].

    "Even so, come, Lord Jesus," Revelation 22:20.

                 Pastor F. M. Riley