I am 75 years old—three-quarters of a century old—and think I may have lived the best life ever lived on the planet. It keeps getting better. I’ve had my share of trials, some of which I wondered if I would survive. However, I can affirm the promise in Romans 8:28, that “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord,” is true every time.

      I usually write these Words for the Week months before they’re published, and I marvel at how often they are timely. If I am correct about when this one will likely be released, the world will likely be in, or entering, a major time of crisis. The troubles coming upon the world were prophesied to come like birth contractions come upon a woman in labor. The world has been experiencing these for some time now.

      Birth contractions come upon a woman in labor suddenly, but they are relatively mild at first before increasing in intensity and frequency as she gets closer to the birth. The world is obviously getting closer to a birth, but what is being birthed?

      We are getting closer to a glorious new day in which Christ will come and take His authority over the whole earth. This day is going to last a thousand years while He, and those who have been prepared to rule with Him, fix everything that has gone awry on the earth since man’s fall in the garden.

      The biblical prophecies confirm that the earth will be restored to the paradise that it was originally created to be. Every wrong is going to be righted, and every tear will be wiped away from every eye. No one is going to hurt anyone else, anywhere on the earth, again. These are God’s promises to the earth, and none of His promises have ever failed.

      The “end times” or “last days” in biblical prophecy speak of the end of this age, not the end of the world. Some English translations from the Greek in the New Testament have confused this, but an accurate translation makes it clear. Not only is the earth going to endure, but we’re told that the Father Himself is going to come to the earth to dwell among men!

      Why would the Father want to dwell on earth with men who rebelled against Him and made such a mess of this world trying to run it without Him? As we are told in the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, “God so loved the world that He sent His Son.” He paid the price for our redemption, our salvation from sin, our restoration from the sin nature, and best of all, our reconciliation to God. He loves us so much that He, God the Father, even wants to live on earth among men!

      God so loves the world that He would send His beloved Son to the cross for us. We see in the book of Revelation that we will forever be calling Jesus “the Lamb” because of what He did for us on the cross. We will eternally ponder this revelation of His love, and I don’t think we’ll ever get tired of it. Why not start right now, taking some time every day to ponder the price He paid for our redemption and reconciliation to Himself? Our Father in heaven loves us this much, and He loves the whole world. He has promised to fix everything we messed up!

      We also see in Genesis 1:2 how the whole earth was in chaos until the Holy Spirit moved upon it, and look at the glorious creation He brought forth. The Holy Spirit really knows how to deal with chaos! There is no amount of chaos we can create that He cannot turn into a beautiful new creation.

      We are now, in every area, experiencing crises that are beyond human wisdom or ability to fix. However, we know God has promised that, after we have learned our lesson by taking the world to the very brink of total destruction, He is going to intervene and fix everything. So, coming to the place where every crisis is beyond human remedy is evidence that we are close to the greatest day of joy the world has ever known—the beginning of the day of the Lord when He will be our King!