THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD

[November 13, 2013]

I’m now bold enough to tell you this: I don’t need sixth sense at all. Anywhere I go, I see dead people.

As you can see too, unlike yesteryears when they appeared to be periodical, natural calamities in these times happen at close interval. A long time ago, it would take hundreds or thousands of years after nature’s wrath of epic proportion would be followed by a similar or different kind but in the same fury and horrific fashion.

Remember the gap of earthquakes and storms between Ice Age and Stone Age and between Triassic Period and Jurassic Period? I bet they are too hard and too long to remember for good, except of course when helped by the all-knowing Google in this Information Overload Period.

Truly, “[h]eaven and earth shall pass away but [God’s] word shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). All that was written shall come to pass eventually and every word prophesied is final and executory.

As I watched on TV those littering dead human bodies and carcasses in every corner of the streets, I could not help but re-imagine those Bible prophecies particularly the ones revealed and written by John about the Apocalypse.

“The times they are a-changin,” as Bob Dylan once popularly sang with his gentle guitar a-weeping. Yeah, the times change to lead us all towards all known and unknown human pain. When rich and poor, big or small, would realize again that the glory of man and everything he worked for would surely be all in vain.

The recent scenes in Samar and Leyte, especially in the City of Tacloban, were only a preview of more coming troubles and travails of man. We saw that when necessity and hunger became priority number one, people would know no law, and in the name of survival, anyone would kill anyone.

Today, it’s like what had happened to Job in the Bible, is also happening now around us all. While his servant was still telling him that all of Job’s precious possessions like cattle and servants were slaughtered and taken away by the Chaldean bandits, this after the previous slaughter from the hands of the Sabeans, another surviving servant arrived and tremblingly informed him that a deadly typhoon came and caused all of his children to perish (Job 1).

And when it seemed all nature’s best, or worst, still wouldn’t be enough, he was inflicted of a gut-wrenching skin ailment as if life was just huff and puff (2:7).

Therefore it was no surprise that even Job’s own dear wife told him to curse God and die because of his too much suffering (2:9). But Job’s reply defined his faith and character amid pain: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.” (13:15).

It is also written and prophesied that in the end times as all told, people would grow impatient of God like the Israelites of old. In truth it is stated that even believers themselves would turn around and deny Him after their love for God shall wax cold (Matt. 24:12)).

There’s no denying that these may be the times referred to by those then called “fools,” like what Thomas Paine had considered as the times that try men’s souls. When all who’ll be saved only are those who’d endure, the ones who remain until the end so brave and so bold.

Brave enough to recognize the frailty of life he cannot bear, and bold enough in his resolve that he indeed needs a Helper. Brave enough to realize that he cannot save himself, all by himself, anywhere, anytime, ever.

Bold enough to accept two things: one, the fact that he’s simply a sinner, and the other is Jesus the Christ, as his own personal Savior, Lord, and Redeemer.