June 2008 has been a very trying month for me and my family.  My father became terminally ill unexpectedly and went home to be with Jesus on June 11.  It was a horrific illness called necrotizing fasciitis (or flesh eating bacteria), which I personally believe, is just another confirmation that the end times are upon us.  We are already experiencing the beginnings of trouble, with nation coming against nation, and land against land: and a great lack of food, and deadly diseases, and natural disasters, in many different places.   These are hard times to be sure, but they aren’t without the grace of Almighty God.  I had a dream sometime last year and I believe God spoke to me, telling me that even our “Bibles will be banned within twenty years.”  Needless to say I believe that the next two decades will reveal an unprecedented time of trouble, “such as never was since the beginning of the world, nor ever will be.” 

Some people don’t put much stock in dreams, and maybe it was “just a dream,” but then again, maybe it wasn’t just a dream.  Maybe God still speaks to us in dreams as is well documented in Biblical passages.  I believe God (the Holy Spirit) does sometimes reveal to us “things to come” and “things we know not of” as the Scripture teaches, if we are open to it.  I’ve had many dreams that I believe were prophetic in nature, though I may not have interpreted them correctly at the first.  Human error, and sin often gets in the way of us understanding the will of God, and I, for one, certainly am not without sin and error. 

I came face to face with that fact during this time of trouble for my family.  We had to decide whether or not to take Daddy off life support, which we all knew Daddy did not want to be on for any length of time.  So Mama, and the four of us kids, decided to take daddy off the blood pressure medication and the ventilator, which we were told were steps in the process of taking “comfort measures” only.  We were told by doctors, daddy would die within a few minutes.  Well that didn’t happen so after a couple of days, I went home to get a shower and take a nap.  When I returned that night, I had a late night gospel sing with daddy, as I knew he used to like to hear me sing the kids to sleep when we lived with them for a while.  And afterwards, I noticed that one of the bags he had been getting was empty.  I asked about it and the nurse told me they had not ordered any more antibiotics for daddy. The doctors and nurses explained to me that the antibiotics weren’t helping daddy and were not contributing to his comfort so I was ok with that after speaking with them. I then realized he was also nearly out of the food he was getting, so I asked about that too. The nurse said that the doctor had ordered no nutrition for daddy, either.