Dear Doves,

     I don’t know if you are as impatient as I am waiting for the Rapture, so I wanted to offer some hopeful food (fruit) for thought.  Summer is a possible season of high alert.  According to Amos 8:1-2, Israel will experience a time of judgment after a harvest of ripe fruit: “This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. ‘What do you see, Amos?’ he asked. ‘A basket of ripe fruit,’ I answered. Then the Lord said to me, ‘The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.’"  There is also a significant passage in Micah that describes the condition of the world after a summer fruit harvest.  "What misery is mine! I am like one who gathers summer fruit at the gleaning of the vineyard; there is no cluster of grapes to eat, none of the early figs that I crave.  The godly have been swept from the land; not one upright man remains. All men lie in wait to shed blood; each hunts his brother with a net. Both hands are skilled in doing evil; the ruler demands gifts, the judge accepts bribes, the powerful dictate what they desire – they all demand gifts, the judge accepts bribes, the powerful dictate what they desire – they all conspire together.  The best of them is like a brier, the most upright worse than a thorn hedge.  The day of your watchmen has come, the day God visits you." Micah 7:1-4.  Isn’t it interesting that Micah describes it as a time when the godly have been swept from the land.  Believers will be swept from the earth as a result of the Rapture and it will be a time of evil for those left behind.

     Believers are also compared to fruit trees.  The predominantly Gentile Church has also been grafted into the tree that is Israel.  Paul talks about this in Romans 11:17: “And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree.”  We are also expected to bear fruit: "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked …. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither." Psalm 1:1-3.  Israel is specifically likened to grapes and figs.  "When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert; when I saw your fathers, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree." Hosea 9:10. 

   Lastly, when Israel entered the Promised Land, the spies brought back a harvest of Summer fruit:  Numbers 13:23: “And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs.”  So we know that they entered the Promised Land at the time of the Summer fruit season.

So don’t lose heart, it’s just the beginning of Summer.   And keep on getting ripe!

                                                                                        Maranatha – Lisa Taylor