I love to sit on the front porch as the evening sun is going down behind the house and watch the birds and creatures coming home to roost or perhaps go into a burrow or clump of weeds after a hard days work looking for food, as the night is falling. The moon is rising over the trees and I can see what looks like mountains and perhaps old man in the moon himself. HA!

The birds as they sweep across the evening sky and at just the last moment pull up their wings and land lightly on a branch far up in safety of the large tree across the way and perhaps my neighbors cat! The rabbits sometimes come out to play and jump and race around an I think what a mighty God we serve, neither man or Satan has been able to create even a small sparrow only God can do such things!

We were involved in a very hard fight for a soul in the past few weeks with some other people and on my birthday July 1 st at 2:15 p.m. in our church nursery long after everyone had left a young man was reborn in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul and I talked with him and Pastor Paul prayed with him for salvation, what a birthday present! While I love all God’s creation the human soul is worth even more than all the world! We are travelers in time, God gives us the breath of life, we come from Eternity and we walk a span of perhaps 70 years some more and others much less and God allows a time of mercy when we are children then we pass into our sinful nature and I believe again we are given a time of mercy, only God knows how long and we must make a choice. “Jesus”, hew was either God’s only Son and walk about doing good as the Bible says or we must say the Bible is a fairy tale and those folks he brought back to life were really just asleep or that cripple just had a cramp in his legs. Our God will not allow anyone to not make a choice! We grow old and even the hardest men wonder perhaps I was wrong maybe the preacher from my child hood had it right. I remember calling on an old man in his 90’s he curtly ordered me off his porch that fall evening a few years ago when I spoke to him of Jesus. A few months later he fell dead beside his car, he passed into Eternity!

The America I knew as a child is passing and in it’s place is coming a hard and unforgiving place where each man is only looking out for himself, people are very hard to get to come to church not realizing time is growing short and the Lord Jesus might even as I write be turning to Father God for the command “Go My Son and bring home our Church!”

The head of the family shall be the first one called to account for both his wife and children and oh what time of weeping shall come when he hears the dreaded words depart from you work of sin I never knew you, the many times a person shall die over and over in Eternity as they think of lost opportunities to be saved! I realize some folks think Christians crazy as we pray and weep for lost souls but, death shall come to us all and if we aren’t ready even God will not be able to help us!

I know this was a hard message but, God laid it on my Heart! Love and prayers to all the old Deacon.

Barney Rodgers