Surround Sound

One of Michael's desires, even when we lived in Acworth, was to have a "man room". He had something of the sort there, but there were also many other things in there, such as two large bookcases filled with Mary's books and mine (mostly mine).
In this house in Monck's Corner, he has a room specially dedicated for that. He just recently purchased a "surround sound" system, and today the installers installed it. It is amazing. We thought "stereo" gave us the feeling of solid sound, but with five speakers and a "subwoofer" this is truly unbelievable sound. Watching a DVD (Marley and Me) tonight I was amazed at the realism and the sense of being in the middle of the action.

This got me to thinking about the announcement of the rapture in I Thessalonians 4:16 "...for 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..."

This loud command will come at any time. When you are watching a movie, you have a good idea when the loud sounds are going to come, but the coming of the Lord Jesus will not have the visible signs to go with it. True, there will be many events that will happen and are already happening which let us know that it can happen at any time, but even the Lord Jesus did not know the exact time when this would happen because, as a man who had laid aside the independent use of his divine attributes (Philippians 2:6-11) he only knew what the Father revealed to him while he was here on earth.

The loudness and the commanding nature of the announcement of His second coming for His saints, together with the element of surprise, will be far and away more impressive than "surround sound."

It is for this reason that it is important that we be ready at all times to present ourselves before the Lord, not so that we may be worthy of being in His presence, for that is already taken care of by the cross work of Christ, but in order that we might be able to stand before Him unashamed.

My constant prayer is that this may be my state of preparation. It would be so much better than to be saved but "so as by fire". May that be the desire of each of us who call ourselves His children.