What do you mean there's no Santa??? Day 22

So...After a couple of weeks of going through the New Testament line by line with my IPod in one hand and colored pencils in the other it had become quite clear to me that I was never going to be able to look at the Bible again like I once used to. Even to this day when I come across someone in an online forum, discussion group or even in person that tell me that I am wrong and that I need to repent of my ways, I can't in good conscience do so. The only thing that I can think of that is equivalent is believing in Santa Claus. You see...When I was in kindergarten there was this boy by the name of Joey Willis. He was the rebellious one of the bunch in my kindergarten class at Bethany Lutheran School. He was a little bit of a bully. A little bit loud if I remember correctly. He was the first person that introduced me to the proper use of the middle finger in getting the attention of the teacher. And to top it all off...He had a dirt bike. And so needless to say...He was the king of show-and-tell. Another thing about Joey Willis. He had this crazy notion that Santa Claus wasn't real. How crazy was that?

Well over the following couple of years other boys in the class had joined the band wagon and of course wanting to be part of the in crowd I of course chanted the same mantra. "Santa Claus wasn't real." But inside I knew that they were wrong. I mean for crying out loud, how could he not exist when there were presents from him under the tree and a stocking filled with joyous delight every year...right on time contrary to what they other boys had been saying. 8)

Then one fateful morning, in the late 70's, about a week or so before Christmas as I was getting ready for school I noticed this big pile of presents on the love seat that resided on the south wall of the living room of my parents house. And contrary to my mothers verbal warning from the kitchen as she was busy cooking breakfast not to dig to deeply, I dove in. Deep!!!

The reality of what Joey Willis had been preaching year after year every Christmas season flooded over me like a 55 gallon drum of warm honey. Suddenly a sick feeling welled up in the pit of my inner most being and a lump found it's way to my throat as I saw that Santa's presents had found their way to my house a week before they were supposed to...and in a sick twist of fate...Santa had the same penmanship as my mother. With a gift to me from my mother in my right hand and a gift from Santa in my left hand the reality that I had been denying had now become undeniable. MY MOTHER WAS JOLLY OLD SAINT NICK!!! 8)

And so it was with my understanding of Bible prophecy. I would never again be able to look at the Bible in the manner in which I had for many years. I was no longer reading something that was written to me as much as it was as though I were reading someone else's mail. Now I'm not by any means suggesting that the Bible is not written to us. Surely it is, just as I would suggest that it was written to all men of all time, ever since the time it was penned. However it was becoming ever more clear to me on a day by day basis through my studies, that I first needed to understand what it meant to those people of which it was first written to before I could apply it to myself.

And so the long and the short of it is that I had begun to see the last days spoken of in the Bible as fulfilled in the last days of Israel's old covenant age and that I could no longer go back to the end times understanding that I had once held.

Now...as I read passages like 1 Peter 4:7 "But the end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers."(NKJV)

and

1 John 2:18 "Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour."(NKJV)

I could no longer in good conscience see these things as speaking of something yet future to us some 2000 years after they were written. These apostles had been given the signs of the times by Jesus in Matthew 24 so that they could discern when then end spoken of by Jesus would take place. And by their own testimony they were convinced that "the end was at hand" and that it was "the last hour."

And now I was convinced as well...