20/20 Vision?

2020 Vision?

It's been quite the year hasn't it?  For me and my family we found ourselves stumbling into 2020 having just gone through the loss of my Mom to a battle with breast cancer in December of 2019, only to find out next, that our whole family would need to get a series of Rabies shots due to a personal encounter with a rabid skunk and it's interactions with a litter of kittens in our shed...  That experience led to an initial bill of over $100,000 for our family.  We are a non-traditional insurance, self-pay medical expense family, so that experience was quite a way to kick off our own unfolding and personal rendition of 2020.  

About halfway through January, as I was driving back to Kansas after having been the key-note speaker at a North Central Oklahoma, men's wild-game feed, I was about two miles from the Kansas State line, when two Oklahoma Whitetail Bucks ran right out in front of me...  The good news was that not only did I get two deer with one shot, but my truck was also not totaled, still drivable, and both the County Sheriff, and the Oklahoma State Trooper I spoke with on the phone, let me salvage the carcasses for meat!  I was even able, after a relatively brief search with a flashlight, to find all of the broken antler shards and pieces after the collision!  So, upon returning home, I got to process two large deer that night, and I was rewarded with a couple of nice racks I would be able to turn into European mounts to add to my bone collection.  I remember wondering to myself that night as I de-boned those two deer, just what the heck 2020 would really be like if it had started out like this? 

In February I partnered with a brother in Jesus and we lead a "Men in Ministry" Hog Hunt and Evangelism training called "When Pigs Fly!" at "No Mercy Outfitters" in Gracemont, Oklahoma.  What a true blast that was!  Then, just 6 days later I hopped on a plane with a Watchman Evangelism ministry team of 9 to be a part of my first International preaching crusade, where our team not only did preaching, evangelism and teaching, we also did community relief work and helped build a Christian school in Liberia, West Africa.  It was a tremendously challenging, exponentially rewarding, Spiritually eye opening, and truly life changing, experience.  I still do not have adequate words to describe what all we learned and experienced on, in, and through that trip.

Then, not long after returning from Africa, it seemed like everything all around the world, and even in the United States, started lurching, twisting, careening... and then, like the way time in an accident freeze frames and inches by, frame by frame, imprinting each tenth of a second on your mind with crystal clarity, while at the same time moving blindingly fast, the world began turning completely upside down, tumbling into an uncontrollable roll... a Global Pandemic, a Brave New World, Masked America, Following the Science, Fear, Lockdowns, the Seizing/Surrendering of Civil Liberties, Propaganda, Death-Tolls, Global Economic Free-Fall, Thousands of Acres Ablaze, the 24-Hour News Cycle, Hatred, Brutality, Racism, Riots, Looting, Cities on Fire, Contact Tracing, Persecution of Christians and of Assemblies of Faith, Hurricanes, Freak Storms, Tornadoes, Earthquakes, almost innumerable Signs in the Heavens (just Google astronomical phenomenon 2020) including even a "Christmas Star" (planetary conjunction), and then let's also not forget the political drama of a Stolen Election that the mainstream media still just won't cover...  On this New Year's Eve, what if the answer to all of this is NOT simply putting 2020 behind us and hoping for a better 2021?  What if there is far more going on than can be touched by well wishes, a handful of positive thoughts, the usual assortment of impotent New Year's Resolutions and all of us placing our hopes in a Vaccine?

Not long after returning from Liberia as I watched and read the news and observed everything begin to unfold through my own lenses of Faith, Scripture, and understandings of Bible Prophecy, I remember frequently being reminded of a quote in Galadriel's voice from the Prologue of the movie "The Lord of The Ring's: The Fellowship of The Ring": "The World is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it..."

(In truth, that quote is not spoken by Galadriel, but is spoken to her by Treebeard, and is actually borrowed and adapted, for the motion picture, from JRR Tolkien's third book of the trilogy "The Return of the King."  Here is the actual quote: "'It is sad that we should meet only thus at the ending. For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air. I do not think we shall meet again.").  In either case, and in both literary contexts, it certainly seems to be a quote for our times and for this day, and I truly cannot tell you how many, many times I have thought of it over the last 9 months. 

Back in 2001 I attended a speaking event in Kansas City, Kansas, (where I was pastoring at the time) which took place just a couple of months after the attacks of September 11th.  At the event, the key note speaker (I can't for the life of me remember what his name was), who was a media spokesperson for the FAA said these words as he began his presentation:  "I've heard so many people say that 'The world has changed since September 11th...' I disagree.  It's not at all that the world has changed, it's just that now our eyes are opened as to how the world really is."  My first reaction to his words were, quite frankly, disagreement... that is until I Scripturally reflected on them a bit.  Then, I realized that the speaker was actually spot on, and as I embraced his words, they were indelibly imprinted on my mind.  And, I must say, just like the quote from Lord of The Rings mentioned above, I have thought of them repeatedly this past year, as layer after layer of 2020 has been peeled away.

So, my question for us on this last day of 2020 is this... Do we have "20/20 Vision" and are we yet able to see how things really are?  As we now reflect on the unparalleled nature of the past 365 days, is there really any remaining doubt that we live in a broken world, in the midst of a fallen humanity, and that our world is tragically beyond the reach of our own best thinking and the best efforts of our science, our technology and our medicine?

There is no doubt in my mind, that now, and that these days, more than ever before, are the days we all need to come to Jesus.  And, there is no doubt in my mind that in these days in which we find ourselves "above ground and walking around" we are closer to His return than ever before.  In three different places the Bible says "All who call upon the Name of the Lord, will be saved." (Joel 2, Acts 2 and Romans 10).  Have you called yet, on the Name of the Lord?  I called on His name for the first "real time" in April of 1989 when I awoke to the realization of the "train wreck" I had made of my life and existence, and found myself with only three crystal clear choices:  Suicide, Insanity or Jesus.  In that instant I recalled the words of a Sunday School teacher from back when I was 8 years old (Mary Lou Stirtz).  She said to me: "Robby, just remember, when you get in a jam, you can always call on Jesus."  So, I did just that.  I said: "Jesus, if You can save me, Save me, and I'll give you my life and never return to the person I've become."  In that moment Jesus saved my soul.  And, I want you to know, in this moment, or whatever moment you find yourself surrounded by in the future, Jesus can save your Soul too.  All you have to do is call!  Will you do that right now?  My hope and prayer is that you will so you and I can both keep on keepin' on in Jesus, until He comes again!

Pastor Rob Schmutz

Watchman Evangelism