I just love your refreshingly honest and transparent and open and childlike attitude about what it is like to be waiting so long and with such conviction for one date or another only to be left bewildered when nothing happens time and again...You have summed up what it feels like and what I'm sure many of us have also gone through over the years when a series of events or coincidences leads us to conclude that "This time, it's REALLY IT!" Only to have nothing happen again and again. Until all we can do is resign ourselves to just keep on keeping on...My most "All-In" experience was clear back in 1987 when a man convinced us that the Great Pyramid gave the date for the rapture as October 14, 1987, and I nearly quit my job but opted instead to take vacation time because I wanted to devote all my time to getting ready. On that morning me and some friends who spent the night at my place got up early and drove 30 minutes to the beach to wait for Jesus. I thought about putting a sign in my car's window saying if this car is still here by such a time here are the keys you can have it, I'm gone type thing. But I didn't.Anyway, all that to say, I can relate. We even then and many times since, have also seen amazing coincidences that seem ordered by God to drive home that something is up only to be disappointed that it was nothing.Yet here's the thing, if you look at this from a greater distance away, like pull the microscope back a ways and think about time from a distant perspective, we don't look so foolish after all. Consider that you can pinch a couple of pages together in your fingers of the books of the Bible just about anywhere and be covering centuries of time between your finger and your thumb that moved at normal slow speed for those who lived through that time but over the long term were world changing for time and eternity when viewed from the distance that we enjoy today. Put in that perspective what is a few years from 1987 to 2013 or 14? Nothing at all! If told like an Old Testament narrative, it could be put in a sentence or two and sound like "And Barry and Randy and all the Doves did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and waited faithfully for their Lord all their days..." There's no recording of the day by day grind of what that actually entails but we, as we read the Bible, have to pause and reflect on that in order to register what that would be like and say, Oh wow, that would require faith and endurance to do that...I can just see us in eternity sitting in some beautiful garden or by clear rivers and telling our tales of which dates we watched for that we were so sure were it and all the coincidences that seemed to nail it down only to have it go by again and again. We will be the unique ones in heaven who were really alive when it finally did happen (I'm pretty sure). Just think of that! Moses and Abraham and David will look at us and say, "So, what was it like waiting and when you finally saw that it was the real rapture? We were all watching and could hardly wait to see the looks on your faces when Gabe was about to blow that horn!" We are compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses and they are not laughing at us for believing in a date even when it turns out to be wrong. If anything they are probably cheering us on and saying don't give up because it is coming.So, just a word of encouragement Randy and all Doves, this time of waiting will be nothing when the rapture finally does come and as that pyramid man said to me when he saw my complete belief in his prediction, he told me that even if nothing happens, you will score points with God for believing in it anyway... I believe that.Luke 12:37. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.
38. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.
39. And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through.
40. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.