During the first week of January, 2018, I received in the mail a New Year's greeting from Carol, my sister-in-law. After her well wishes for the coming year, she asked simply: What is your "take" on the end times? I was as eager to respond to her request as I was curious regarding what her request actually was. Carol is a faithful, dedicated Christian. She is familiar with the many biblical prophecies concerning things to come. It seemed to me that she was asking, given the occasion of the beginning of a new year, for a timely scriptural update. In other words: What's up? In my mind I re-phrased her question to read: Clyde, prophetically speaking, is anything going to happen in 2018 that I should be aware of?
Actually, possibly so. The next prophetic event to occur on earth could indeed have taken place in 2018. God is proceeding according to the divine chronological plan He has had in mind from the beginning. That plan, righteous in nature and revealed to us in Scripture, indicates that human history is heading toward a climactic period of events. The timing of these coming events is in His hands, but current world conditions would warrant the next prediction taking place now, or in the immediate future. True, things could get worse, but they certainly seem bad enough already to necessitate God's sovereign intervention.
A meaningful reply to Carol's implied question would include two efforts. One would be to examine the Bible's description of the next world-impacting event to occur. The other would be to place that event in the context of the scriptural big picture of the last days. With such an overview in mind of God's glorious plan to transition from the Church Age to the Kingdom Age, we would then be able to say as much as could be said about 2018, and beyond.
My response to Carol's request was a series of letters mailed over an extended number of months. With her permission, those letters are now the chapters of this book. When writing each letter, my desire was, by the Lord's enabling, to be as much a source of encouragement as information. That is still my desire.
